The Black Cuillin

The Black Cuillin, the most rugged mountain range in the UK, forms a continuous chain of narrow ridges, jagged pinnacles and wild, ice-scoured corries around the basin of Loch Coruisk in Skye. It has attracted visitors such as Boswell and Johnson, Sir Walter Scott, and J.M.W. Turner. John Mackenzie, the first to systematically explore the range, noted that: ‘nowhere in the British isles are there rock climbs to be compared with those in Skye’. This new and exhaustive history of climbing in these hills covers the discoveries and exploits of the pioneers, for whom even the ascent of a single peak was a formidable prospect, to the athletic rock climbers of more recent generations who flock to these beautiful and challenging mountains.

‘Calum Smith’s chronicle of mountaineering in the Black Cuillin of Skye―Britain’s finest hill range―is exhaustively knowledgeable and scintillatingly written. Any devotee of the Cuillin will want this on their bookshelf, to bring back the memories and inspire the ambitions. A monumentally good book that transcends even the excellent earlier works by Humble and Stainforth’. - Jim Perrin