The Last Wilderness

During the last week of April 2023 (before the midges strike) I travelled all the way up to the North West of Scotland to spend some time with my good friend Geoff at his parents house in Scourie. The plan was to tackle a number of mountain summits we had talked about over the years but via packraft.

Packrafting is pretty new to the UK but has been big over in the States for well over a decade. As both a professional mountaineer and a multi-disciplined paddler, it's something I have been keen to embrace for some time now. Fortunately, Geoff, who like myself is also into multiple outdoor pursuits, jumped on board to the idea and so we hatched a plan.

The first objective was the majestic Suilven, standing at 731m with its steep sided ridge looking like a massive wale fin projecting out of the landscape. Normally this is a 12km walk in across the moorland bogs (one way) carrying all your kit for the days exped. To avoid this 24km trek, we decided to packraft in to the South along Loch Veyatie and the Uidh Fhearna river. 3 hours later, we banked our rafts and headed up onto the summit ridge. Due to winds and snow on the summits, we decided not to scramble along the Eastern ridge and headed back down. Just over 2 hours with the wind on our backs we were back at the van, long day but mission successfully completed.

After spending the next couple of days sea kayaking around the coast and offshore islands, some as far out as a 2km sea crossing, we waited for the right weather window to appear. Our next summit was the Stack of Glencoul. Again, this is normally a monster walk in, but once again we inflated our 3.4kg packrafts and paddled (into the wind) along the tidal Loch Glencoul with the plan to catch the changing of the tide on the return journey.

After a 2 hour 30 minute paddle in we once again secured out rafts and started the approach walk in up the Glen Coul re-entrant. Geoff had identified an opportunity to go straight for the summit once past the dangerous and unclimbable crags along the Northern shoulder. Within 90 minutes we were on the summit overlooking Eas a' Chual Aluinn, the highest waterfall in the UK. After a short rest and some scran we returned back along the same route to the shore and managed to catch the tide just right with the wind on our backs. In less than 2 hours we were once again back at the van, having been followed by a number of curious seals for the majority of the journey.

Packrafting is an amazing adventure activity, used to combine climbing, trekking, coasteering and multi day adventures. I can’t recommend it enough but it was made even better sharing the experience with my bruder Geoff.