Gordon Smith writes about Scottish winter and alpine climbing adventures from the mid-seventies...
In my day walking up the Allt a' Mhuilinn to the CIC Hut from the distillery was a horrid, mucky business. Bog-trotting was what we called it and often we wore wellies to keep our climbing boots, our socks, and our enthusiasms dry. There was this one time that I was bog-trotting up the hill and I came across one of those Englishmen. He said his name was Terry King; Terry to his pals but he was Kingy to me from that day on. He was wandering down in the late afternoon with his mate looking fed up after a day of mucking about doing nothing much at all. I was on my own which, being a teenaged climbing vagrant, I often was. I had a vague plan to do some soloing the next day but Kingy straight away made me, an utter stranger, promise to stay an extra day or two after and do some climbing with him when he came back up the hill. And so I did. I promised.
Read more