A Rescuer's Tale

Glencoe Mountain Rescue veteran Davy Gunn’s book tells tales of drama, tragedy, resilience and ultimately triumph

- 

I'VE been reading a book that has re-introduced me to an area I thought I knew pretty well. The book is called Between A Loch And A Hard Place and the loch in question is Loch Leven. The hard place is that area of "austere Dalriadan rock and the Andesite of the Bidean nam Bian mountain range".

Between the shores of the loch and the skirts of the mountain lies the old village of Carnoch, nowadays usually referred to as Glencoe.

Glencoe, the wee village, and Glen Coe, the glen, have been significant in my life and in the lives of most of us who profess a love of Scotland's mountains.

To me it's the epicentre of mountaineering in Scotland (although other areas have a strong claim too), while for some folk it represents a darkness that has shadowed large areas of Scotland for hundreds of years, a form of colonialism that sought to destroy a traditional way of life, a forerunner of the despised Highland Clearances.

The shadow of the Massacre of Glencoe still lingers in the glen, and rightly so. It was an act of treachery that betrayed the hospitality entrenched in Highland culture when Hanoverian forces murdered their MacDonald hosts. Thirty-two men, women and children died at the hands of their guests, government soldiers who rose quietly and murdered them during the darkness of a February morning. This "murder under trust" became indelibly etched in the pages of Highland history.

While we should never forget, I believe commercial tourism is responsible for a dark cloud that still lingers in the minds of many over the so-called "glen o' weeping".

It paints too grim a picture of one of Scotland's great glens, a wonderful landscape of high peaks, waterfalls and roaring rivers, the very cradle of Scottish mountaineering.