Weather/Conditions: Utterly beautiful evneing, maturing into an orange sunset.
Distance/Ascent/Time: 5.6km / 850m / 2h 49m
Accompanying: Alone up and down, meeting Mark, Kieran, Euan.. on the summit

This aftenoon came about as a result of Kieran Duncan putting out a shout about filming on the Cobbler. He was filming for Wild About Argyll, and the forecast was set to make it a stunning evening.

So I drove up from Glasgow, and somewhat charged out the car parking, up the side of the burn and onto the flank of the Cobbler. He'd mentioned a meeting time of 7.30pm or so, which gave 55 minutes to the summit. Woops - not as much time as I'd meant to give.

It's quite hard-going up the side of the Cobbler with no track, but I made it to the summit in 55 minutes; bang on schedule. There were few people to be seen, but alone on the summit was Mark Beaumont, the face of the campaign. I cut his Africa Solo film earlier in the year so the day was a chance to meet again and climb a mountain while at it.



The guys filming took slightly longer, coming up the east ridge past the South Peak. They did their filming on the summit while I disappeared off to scramble up the South Peak. Compared to previous times, this felt pretty easy and I was on the top in no time. Nor did the South Peak feel especially large. I jumped out onto the little projecting rock on the edge and looked down North Wall Groove - the exposure didn't register whatsoever (in my case this was definitely 100% learned!) and I thought it looked pretty reasonable all in all.



But the guys shouted across that they were getting on in time. So I headed back. Mark twigged they hadn't shot any of me for all the effort of asking me to come. So I did a quick climbing bit on the summit pinnacle which ended up in the Skerryvore Live Forever video. (01.46 - I'm more than a little bit pleased about that!)



We ended up parting ways and I headed west off the hill myself. So fast paced as it was, I remember very little of the descent and I was back at the car 21 minutes after leaving the top. 21 minutes of intense concentration on rough ground and a good time to show for it - brilliant. I high-tailed it to Arrochar, missed the chippy closing time by minutes and headed home.

360° Panorama

The Cobbler (8.52pm)