South of Loch Mullardoch you will find the Glen Affric and Kintail area whose southern boundary is the A87 road to Inverness. The Five Sisters of Kintail, Beinn Fhada, Sgurr nan Ceathreamhnan and Carn Eighe are just some of the impressive peaks in this area, and all have their own unique selling points such as remoteness, size, steepness or height. As a result, peaks in the list are all over 900m.
This was my first hill trip to Scotland since before my daughter was born and this was also intended to be my own and my daughter's (now 16 years old) first Munro. It was a fantastic day with all the right conditions, we'd choosen the 5 sisters of kintail as our objective, which with long daylight hours should have been realistic. We did indeed make the ridge, and the first Munro and in good time, and the first 3.5hours of the day seemed excellent. However the celebration was cut short by an unanticipated and indeed unprecidented attack of severe vertigo on the part of my daughter. I have to include this as a QMD because undoubtably it fufills the criteria of challenge. It took a further 5 and a half hours and a close level of careful support and encouragement to get down from the hill, which we did suceed in doing, with no lasting detriment to either party or our relationship. It was a salient lesson in how people - dispite previous experience in other hill areas and a careful discussion of what the activity entails - can have unexpected responses to hill & mountain challenges.
