Moonwalker - Adventures of a Midnight Mountaineer

THE mountain landscape of Assynt never fails to thrill and astonish but even I had to admit to a distinct feeling of deja view this time.

After all, it had only been seven days since my last visit, the result of my imaginary secretary not paying attention to advance bookings with different groups.

Not that I was complaining. If there's a better place for repeat visits it's hard to think of one that tops this strangely beautiful land of inselbergs than here. It didn't hurt that I had once again followed the Crowded House advice and brought the weather with me.

That probably also explains why I was greeted as some sort of returning sun god by the staff at the Inchnadamph Explorers Lodge. It's a welcoming place anyway but I had the feeling I could have asked for and received some sort of Las Vegas-style residency at that moment.

But if the views from the summits were familiar, the ways of getting there were not. So far on this second round of Corbetts I have managed to tackle the majority from different, or longer and more inclusive, approaches.

First up was Cul Beag, done last time as a short but very sharp push from the west. Now it was a more langorous course, a wander in from the A835 on a grassy line above the craggy edge of Creag Dhubh, followed by a rise and fall over the intervening Meall Dearg before the push to the final pyramid. Perched right above the void, Cul Beag's summit cairn is a magnificent viewpoint with the iconic Stac Pollaidh showing a particularly fine profile, but a sudden dulling down of the light took some of the shine away. Still, it was dry and I could see every peak for miles so it was a minor niggle.

The reunion with old friends didn't just involve mountains. On our visit the week before, some of our party had met octogenarian Munroist Nick Gardner on the slopes of Suilven. When they arrived back at base they brought a pair of walking poles that had been left behind and after some photographic detective work, managed to assert they belonged to Nick.

I had walked with Nick a few times during his incredible Munros round which he started in his 80s and finished in two and a half years. He also managed to raise £150,000 for charities close to his heart and has since been awarded an MBE. Now 84, Nick is still tramping the hills – not so long ago he completed the Skye ridge traverse for the second time in recent years – and he was keen to meet up for a couple of days rather than have his poles posted on.

Next morning, after reuniting Nick with his poles, we set off for a traverse of Glas Bheinn. My last ascent was 16 years ago and then I had taken the shortest route up and down from the high point of the road. Mind you, I did then climb Canisp in the afternoon. This time there was no similar hurry. We started from the same high point but then continued out over the back, dropping through awkward and steep scree and heather ramps to pick up a fine path running round a series of sparkling lochans all the way back to the lodge.

The mighty Quinag was looking especially fine in these blue-sky conditions but as we made our way to the summit of Glas Bheinn, the mood changed. From nowhere, a huge black cloud drifted in and sat over Quinag's tops and corries while the rest of the surrounding landscape remained bathed in sunshine. It looked like a concentrated storm was brewing and the constant juxaposition of light and shadow was mesmerising. Instead it proved transient, the darkness disintegrating into a fine mist which rolled away harmlessly. Seconds later, all was back to normal. 

The return path gave us superb sightings of Ben More Assynt and Conival jutting above a necklace of gleaming silver lochans beneath the massive scree wall of Beinn Uidhe. Amid the clacking of the rocks under our feet, we heard the distinctive call of a ring ouzel, a change from the ubiquitous meadow pipits. We only met three people, all Europeans, all walking solo on this stretch of the Cape Wrath Trail and on their way to the bothies of Glencoul and Glendhu. One looked, and suggested, that he had possibly taken on too much: we couldn't help but keep wondering how far he had made it.

Our plans for a full traverse of Breabag the following day were shelved and we stuck to the trade route from the Bone Caves path. This may have been familiar to me but it was all new to Nick – despite having climbed every mountain in the north-west many times, this was one he had never visited.

We diverted up to the caves then took to open grassy slopes where for the third day in a row pipits proved to be the dominant force, whistling, darting and diving all around. Eventually we breached the chink in the rocky slopes and made our way up through the rubble to the summit to take in all the old familiar faces. 

So far we had seen no one else but as we sat at the cairn, a walker appeared with his dog. He had lived in the area for years but like Nick had been up every peak except Breabag. Of the three people present, only the outsider had been here before.

It seemed strange that the deja view was mine and mine alone.