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"Peaks and pinnacles, jagged crests and fantastic outlines; a wilderness of weird shapes, dark, solemn and awful. Sunshine occasionally illuminates their rugged crests… but the darkness of eternal night dwells in their gorges."
– C.R. Weld
The iconic ridge of the Black Cuillin on the Isle of Skye is the UK's most challenging mountain range. Over 11 kilometres long and above 3,000 feet in places, the ridge contains 11 Munros and 16 other summits. In The Black Ridge, Simon Ingram offers a powerful distillation of the atmosphere, history and experience of the ridge: Britain's ultimate mountain range.
Split into two parts, the Ascent and the Traverse, the narrative of this book follows a complete, continuous expedition across the treacherous ridge. The narrative of this journey is interwoven with history of the region and of the explorers who have braved the climb, the natural history of the area and its artistic and cultural significance over the ages. The result is the definitive book about the atmospheric experience and cultural history of Britain's most unique and most dangerous peaks. It is simply the hardest place in the land: a place described by the explorer Frank Smythe as 'Britain's only true mountains'.
Simon Ingram was born in Liverpool. An outdoor journalist and writer for over ten years, he is the editor of Trail, the UK's bestselling hillwalking magazine, and the author of Between the Sunset and the Sea: A View of 16 British Mountains. He lives in Stamford, Lincolnshire.
"Thrilling"
– Guardian
"Delicious [...] evokes the weather and the rocks and the people of the Skye I know better than anything else I've encountered"
– Neil Gaiman
"An utterly enthralling tale to read. About passion, love, mystery, human nature [...] an important important addition to the canon of mountaineering literature about Skye."
– Great Outdoors magazine
"The depth of research is extensive, yet his writing is so poetic that the pages fly by."
– Rosie Morton, Scottish Field
"A hillwalker's paean to the Cuillin blends scenery, folklore and wonder [...] The Skye Cuillin has obviously captured Simon Ingram's heart and that fact resounds from every page [...] [The Black Ridge] will undoubtedly become a classic narrative of this scenically magnificent, legend-rich and geologically unique part of Scotland"
– Cameron McNeish, The Herald
"[Ingram's] Cuillin journey makes riveting reading [...] It's unputdownable"
– Maggie Fergusson, Spectator
"Brilliant"
– Jamie Collinson, Caught by the River
