SUILVEN GEOCACHE Traditional Cache

The Routes to the Mountain Suilven is one of the UK’s iconic mountains, rising out of the surrounding maze of lochans and peaty grassland like a dreadnought, although it’s summit is only around 2,300 feet above sea level so it fails to reach Corbett or Munro status. In spite of this, its summit is probably visited by around 1000 people each year so spectacular are the views. However, I suspect the cache will be visited fewer than a handful of times a year. This is partly the difficulty in reaching the location – a 5 mile walk in from the nearest road before the climbing starts – but also the only two routes to the summit ridge are very steep paths up scree and rock. However, there is no exposed scrambling so I do not think the terrain merits 5 stars, in fact at the actual cache site the terrain and difficulty levels are both 1 or 1.5 because the main summit is a huge flat plateau. The cache site is around 70 metres beyond the summit cairn, in a crevice below a large flattish boulder. I think the nicest approach is from the car park at Inverkirkaig (NC 08600 19410) and if you take this route you could visit the impressive Fall of Kirkaig and the geocache above these.

The Wall One of the strange things about the mountain is a seemingly pointless wall built not far below the summit. Out of interest I googled it and found it is a “destitution wall” built about 160 years ago. In the 1840s and 1850s, during the Highland clearances, when the people were forced from their lands by rich landowners to make way for sheep farming, with many leaving for America, Canada, Australia, etc. the potato famine struck. It hit Scotland not just Ireland, so those that were left behind were starving. Too proud to beg for charity, which the rich landowners had refused anyway, they were forced to work with little or no purpose, building roads and walls in the middle of nowhere in exchange for food. These were the 'destitution' roads and walls that still exist across the Highlands to this day, a sad reminder of a blighted history. Apparently there is another on Beinn Dearg. Sadly the projects were deliberately designed to be pointless; the Victorian "Christian work ethic" idea was that people couldn't just be given subsistence money or rations for ‘nothing’! Some of the stones weigh over a ton and the climb up Suilven is incredibly steep so just imagine the sheer effort to carry such stones.

The Cache The cache itself is a small ‘clip and lock’ box about 6 cm square so it should be waterproof and strong enough to survive without attention for long periods. It will take geocoins or small TB’s but please don’t clog it up with odd bits of paper or ‘geotat’ that will hold moisture or go soggy – kiddies are not going to come up here to swop “goodies”! However, it should appeal to strong walkers and mountaineers (and trackables) that like the more challenging type of cache. When initially placed it contains a log book, pencil and a travelbug.

MY THANKS
The cache I placed survived for 5 years but was blown away sometime during its 6th winter. Hill bagger very kindly put a fresh box in place when he climbed the mountain during summer 2015 and I am exceedingly grateful to him for this for, although I dearly want to climb this tremendous mountain again, it is impractical for me living in the West Midlands
A great big THANK YOU also to Russell and FOC Friends of Carlotta for putting a new box in place in August 2017 when the previous one went missing.
And another MEGA AMOUNT OF GRATITUDE to geocaching angelTippy1969 who found the hiding place devoid of a container in July 2019 and so kindly put a new one in place. Unfortunately, for some reason this didn't survive long and I am very grateful for fellow pensioner Ramnageo for making contact before his ascent in 2020 and offering to replace it again if this was necessity - and it was. Sadly his container was missing a year later and so I am very grateful to Fenland Lass & Cambridge Otter who placed a tube at the rock on 10th August 2021 when they found GZ empty. And over 3 years later this is still being found by every searcher. So I hope you will :-) My very grateful thanks to all who have helped to keep this cache listing going!!