A River Trilogy by W. D. Wetherell

Author:W. D. Wetherell [Wetherell, W. D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510728257
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2018-01-09T05:00:00+00:00

This peak with its bristling summit ridge of sandstone pinnacles is the favorite of all mountaineers visiting Coigach. Bold and steep buttresses rise at each end of the mountain; the weird formations of sandstone are a great attraction and those crowning the terminal points of some of the very narrow spurs can only be reached by a sensational scramble. The whole of Stac Polly is the delight of the photographer, and is the most rewarding and sensational subject in all Scotland.

I brought the book back to the States with me, glanced at Stac Polly’s picture surprisingly often in the intervening years, daydreamed about going back one day and climbing it. Gradually, it became one of those lesser ambitions even a happy life becomes littered with, and yet fate took a lucky turn with this one, and here I was nine years later parking my car in the turnoff at its base and tying on my hiking boots and starting toward its ridge with my wife.

Again, we were blessed with the sunshine that had drenched us every minute of the trip. Between the darkness of the night I’d first seen it and the natural exaggeration of memory, I was prepared to be disappointed by Stac Polly’s size, but if anything the sun only emphasized it, throwing the towers and spires into even bolder relief. I understood now the appropriateness of the name. Weathered indents made the towers look stacked rather than carved, and homely as the mountain was, there was a wild, merry impudence in the way it rose there from the scree—a perfect Polly through and through.

Our legs were in that happy condition that comes after a week’s strenuous climbing, when up hardly seems up at all, and we made good time along the dry bed of a burn. There were lots of sheep about with their lambs; in a short while we were above them, or at least all but one.

“Hear that bleating?” Celeste asked. “It’s a lamb. He’s stranded up there on the cliff.”

“He’ll be all right,” I said.

“That must be his mother down below. I think you should climb up and chase him back to her.”

I wasn’t worried about the lamb; he was perched on a ledge fifty yards above us, as rigid and proud as the hood ornament on a ‘53 Buick. We were out to climb Stac Polly—why deny that privilege to him? But unluckily for the lamb, I was in a frisky mood, and the idea of chasing him from his smugness was irresistible.

Off I went. Within seconds I was in among the lesser towers and buttresses that make up Stac Polly’s flank. It was hard to keep sight of the lamb from in close. Celeste, below me on the bulge of scree, kept up a running play-by-play.

“He’s still there. . . . No, he’s moving through the heather. He’s coming your way. He sees you. . . . He’s heading uphill. He’s trotting. . . . He’s trotting faster.”

Each time I drew even with him, he took off again, climbing those rocks as daintily as a mountain goat.

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