Locomotoring

Skye is uniquely famous for its crags (and the expansive sky). I would say the same thing for Himalaya, but it is very hard to comprehend the seemingly infinite scale of Himalaya. Skye mountains feel more human scale. I can imagine living in Skye and loving a crag. And getting to know the crag intimately like the back of my hand – across the 1000 hours of sunshine and the remaining 7000 hours of rain, fog and snow.

The mountains in Skye are part of Appalachian-Caledonian Mountains (link). The range was formed 250 Million years ago and is now scattered across continents – eastern United States and Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia, the British Isles, Brittany, the Iberian Peninsula, and the Anti-Atlas Mountains of Morocco. The oldest rocks in Skye are in Sleat peninsula (southernmost point), Lewisian Gneiss from 2.8 billion years ago. The final shapes that we we see today are result of glacial activity in the last ice age about 20,000 years ago (link).

Our BnB, Woodbine, is located in Uig. It is a good ways up from Portree, the commercial center of Skye. It also meant that we were rather close to the Quirang mountain. It took almost no effort to get there. The last few miles are a single track lane with passing places. The parking lot was nearly full by 10 am. If it weren’t summer, when sun rises at 3 am, I would have tried to catch Quirang at sunrise.

The trail The Quirang, it is a 5.2 miles out and back and should take anywhere between 2-3 hours. That assumes you are walking normally on a trial. It will take twice as long, if not longer, if you the kind that is impressed by rocks. As soon as you get off the parking lot, the view opens up and keeps on producing one grand view after another. So you can’t stop snapping pictures. The valleys, the lochs, the ocean, the sheep, sheep poop (I mean the daisies), the rock slides, the streams, the cliffs, the heather, the tranquil pool and the expansive blue sky.

We snapped a few hundred pictures and made only the first mile and back in three hours. Eventually I had to turn around so I could find a public toilet, the landscape (and the crowd) does not allow for a quick duck behind the bushes.