Euan, Mike and myself have been up on Skye for the last three days with Alasdair, Tony, Leanne, Jason and Miriam from the Glasgow Hill Walking and Mountaineering Club.
On Saturday we climbed Sgurr Mhiccoinnich from Bealach Coire Lagan via the North Ridge then returned to the bealach and headed up the South-East Flank route on Sgurr Dearg to climb the Innaccessible Pinnacle via the East Ridge. There was a dusting of snow high up early on, but this melted during the day with rain showers to summit level and winds picking up as the day went on.
The weather forecast for Sunday looked wild with continuous rain and winds gusting over 100mph at summit levels, so we opted for a low level walk in to Camasunary. This proved a wise choice with 30mm rain falling before noon and flooding causing even the roads to be passable only with care.
On Monday we headed up to An Dorus and climbed Sgurr a’ Ghreadaidh North-North-West Ridge and Sgurr a’Mhadaidh via the South-West Ridge. We had showers on and off through the day on a North-North-West wind with the odd break in the cloud to give dramatic views. The showers were falling as sleet high up giving the odd patch of wet snow, but these were generally melting fast as conditions improved through the day.
The trip gave a great introduction to Skye for four of the group who were new to the Island. On the drive back south views of the more inland hills (east end of Glen Shiel and down to the Central Highlands) showed that the precipitation had fallen as snow inland with significant accumulations down to circa 800m.
