'Fantastic!' Badenoch climbing legend salutes Everest achievement
The grit and determination which got 27-year-old Sam Cairns to the top of the world this week was saluted from the Hebridean heights by another of Badenoch's climbing greats, Sandy Allan.
"It's fantastic," said Sandy Allan of Newtonmore, who entered the history books in 2012 by carving a unique route on Nanga Parbat’s Mazeno Ridge.
Allan, who runs mountain guide service Team Ascent, was climbing 812m Askival on the Island of Rum this week when he heard the news, praised his fellow strath climber's conquering of the 8849m Himalayan peak.
He said: "Congratulations to him. It’s wonderful that the strath has produced one more of only a very few local people to stand on top of Everest."
It's not known just how many climbers from the Badenoch and Strathspey have made 'the big one' but it's a very exclusive club.
Cairns, from Glenfeshie, made it to the summit on Thursday last week despite an 'avalanche' of obstacles including losing his passport before the adventure had even begun.
He spent every penny he'd earned surmounting travel delays, illness and literal avalanches on his way to the roof of the world.
For Allan his own 'big one' came in the summer of 2012, when he entered the history books as one of the two-man team (with Rick Allen) to open up the previously unclaimed Mazeno Ridge on one of the world's most hazardous ascents.
The long narrow ridge is part of the Nanga Parbat massif in Gilgit–Baltistan, Pakistan, officially the longest of any ridge on the 8000metre peaks in the Himalayas.
He was to tell his own amazing story in the award-winning account "In Some Lost Place" (Vertebrate).
