The Black Ridge: Amongst the Cuillin of Skye

by Simon Ingram

Rising a kilometre out of the storm-scoured waters around Scotland’s Isle of Skye is a dark battlement of pinnacles and ridgelines: the Cuillin.

Plagued by ferocious weather and built from rock that tears skin and confounds compasses, a crossing of the Cuillin is the toughest mountaineering expedition in the British Isles. But the traverse is only part of its lure. Hewn from the innards of an ancient volcano, this mountain range stands like a crown on an island drenched in intrigue. While nineteenth-century climbers flocked to the Alps, the ridge lay untrodden and unyielding. When a generation of mountaineers did come, they found a remarkable prize: the last peaks of Britain to be climbed – peaks that would be named after those who climbed them. Along the way, many others, from artists and poets to mystics and wanderers, have been lured by the Cuillin’s haunting beauty and magic. Those who have been seduced by the deadly magic of these mountains attest to the complexity of humans’ relationship with the intrigue of our wildest, most dangerous places.

The Black Ridge is a journey through the history and into the heights of the Cuillin of Skye – from the ridge’s violent birth to the tales of its pioneers, its thrills, its myths and its monsters. From a night spent in a cave beneath its highest peak to the ascent of its most infamous pinnacle, this is an adventure on foot through all seasons across the most mesmerising mountain range in Britain.

Genres: Nonfiction, Scotland

576 pages, Paperback

First published May 14, 2020

About the author

SIMON INGRAM is an internationally published journalist and author.

His work has appeared in publications including National Geographic, The Independent, The Sunday Times and a range of magazines and periodicals such as Landscape, Empire, and the Ernest Journal.

After graduating in geological science, he started his career in adventure and travel journalism in 2004. He was the editor of Trail Magazine for nine years and has been a columnist for The Guardian‘s century-old Country Diary since 2016.

His first book Between the Sunset and the Sea (HarperCollins, 2015) won wide critical praise. His work has been translated into six languages and his photographs have appeared on the covers of magazines and books.

He lives in Stamford, Lincolnshire.

Reviews

[Dr. des. Siobhán · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started this book on the Isle of Skye but it was just too dense, too informative, too cool to read it quickly. Simon Ingram has done a great job, "The Black Ridge" is both history and personal account. I have been travelling to the Isle of Skye since I was a kid but this book has taught me a lot. I recommend just reading one chapter at a time, really, otherwise it's too much information. Maybe the audiobook would've been a nice experience too but I also appreciated the pictures!

5 stars

[Jamie Collinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I've read in some time. Simon Ingram has been one of Britain's best writers about the natural world for some time, and this is his magnum opus. It's about the most interesting mountain range - and ridge - in the UK, but full of history, amazing characters, bravery and danger, geology and Scotland. It's an existential book that even a reader with the most passing interest in mountaineering will enjoy. The passion breathes out of every page. Ingram describes how the mountains have possessed him, and the ultimate accolade for this book is that the reader is thoroughly possessed too. Can't recommend highly enough to anyone interested in nature, but also in simply losing oneself in brilliant, original writing.

[Guy Boersma · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have the stamina for 500 pages on The Cuillin Ridge, this is a hugely rewarding read. The climber's adventure across the ridge is gripping and a real page-turner. It's interspersed with lovingly told stories and histories of the mountain range, the island, the people and the mountaineering pioneers who visited Skye's version of The Alps.

I started this book with some trepidation but now recommend it, unreservedly.

[Steve Chilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives some fascinating background on the Cuillin ridge - it's history, geology, and exploration. It is written in a very engaging style, and is up there with his other book, 'Between the Sunset and the Sea'. This took me back to my own trips to the ridge, our many escapades, and eventual fabulous crossing. Ingram's own passion comes out of the pages at you.

[Richard Rees · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. So much detail about the ridge including history and geology interspersed with Simon Ingram's personal experience.

[Peter D'Luhosch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book about 18 months after a visit to the Isle of Skye. During my visit, I did some hiking around Loch Corusik and amidst the Black Cuillin. I enjoy reading books about travel and mountaineering and, combined with my personal experience, assumed this book would help me make more thorough sense of my time in Skye. It did not disappoint. Like many books of this genre, the author combines local and natural history to frame his narrative of traversing the Ridge. Interesting stories of those who pioneered the routes and inhabited the isle amplify Simons adventures and put them in context. While the history is fascinating and probably necessary for someone who has not studied or visited Skye, it is the authors own accounts of the Ridge that make the book worthwhile. I read somewhere that an experience has multiple stages: Planning, traveling, the experience itself, and post visit processing via memory. It is in this last facet of the spectrum that this book moved me. I saw first-hand an incredible landscape. My short time there left me with questions and unresolved feelings - as special places often do. The Black Ridge helped me put all of that in context and completed my journey.

[Louise Hewett · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful book! I tackled this book as part of my study to learn more and write about the Black Cuillin of Skye in my own novel series, and it gave me everything I needed and more. Ingram's writing is easy and eloquent, rendering dry topics palatable, in fact on occasion tasty. I'll never do any mountain climbing myself, and the nearest I can come to feeling the thrill of a scramble is the scree slope I raced up when I was twenty-four in mid Wales, 1991 - a remnant of mining in Cwm Rheidol. Heart pounding, glad to be on level ground sooner rather than later, it's all I have to even begin imagining the sublime experience of being on a place like the Black Cuillin. And I will probably never get to Skye, although it has certainly wheedled its way into my imagination, and via that route, my heart. I really absolutely loved this book.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A big book, covering a big subject, the Black Cuillin Ridge of Skye. Taking time to explore the geology, the folklore, the history and the tales of its earliest mountaineers it becomes an increasingly immersive read. Simon Ingram combines this all with his own attempt to climb along the ridge, and the highs and lows of this give him pause to reflect on why people are drawn to these remote (and dangerous) places. On the back of it I have actually now booked myself into a scrambling refresher course, just to keep my skills up before I next desert my family and run off into the hills.

[Pete Perrington · Rating 3 out of 5]

This 500 page book is good, but editing should have made this a 300 page corker!

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Climbing journal plus lots of interesting history of Isle of Skye