Overview of route towards An Sgurr.
Route to An Sgurr from pass.
Start of path towards Eigg's south coast caves.
| An Sgurr and caves from
Galmisdale An Sgurr |
| Estimated net time | 3-4 hours | ||
| Difficulty | No difficulties, although the mountain looks very difficult. | ||
| Drinking water | No stable access to running water. | ||
| GSM coverage | Coverage throughout the route (June 2014). | ||
| Parking | Not really applicable since you're very likely to arrive the island by boat. | ||
| Start height | 2 metres | ||
| Vertical metres | 450 metres for the roundtrip. | ||
| Trip distance | 10.6 km | ||
| GPS-file | X | ||
| Map |
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| Route photo |
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From the village Arisaig, on road A830 on the Scottish west coast, get the passenger ferry across to Galmisdale on the island Eigg. It can be wise to book in advance.
At Galmisdale follow the road uphill. Make sure you don't turn right in the junction after 630 metres, and then continue straight ahead onto forest road 40 metres later (don't turn left). Follow this road 600 metres, past a farm and to a T-junction. Turn left in the T-junction and then leave the road after 80 metres and turn right onto a marked path. Follow this path all the way past An Sgurr on its north side, and then turn left up towards a pass, which will bring you across to the south side of An Sgurr. From here follow the path right (east) to the summit, which is marked by a concrete cairn.
Descend by reversing your ascent route back down to the start of the forest road 670 metres above the ferry port. Turn right here and then fork left after another 240 metres, a little before a house. Follow the path south and west down to Massacre Cave (briefly signed), and then 300 metres along the coast to Cathedral Cave.
From Cathedral Cave walk back to the ferry port along the path and roads you followed earlier.
The weather forecast for this Sunday was very promising so we decided to visit Eigg from our base south of Forth William. When we arrived at Arisaig it turned out that we should have bought tickets for the ferry in advance, but we were lucky and they still had some space to take on another four travellers. During the one-hour boat trip we had an interesting chat with Mr. Duncan, who was sitting next to us, and who had been to Norway on many occasions visiting his son in Stavanger.
At Galmisdale we headed directly up the road towards An Sgurr, and then the path up to the summit, overtaking a number of hikers along the way. After a relatively long stay at the summit we headed back to the pass west of the summit where we did some fun bouldering, and then back down towards Galmisdale. Above Galmisdale we walked down to the south coast where we visited both Massacre Cave and Cathedral Cave, before heading back to Galmisdale. While waiting for the boat to take us back to Arisaig we enjoyed a basic lunch at the cafeteria above the ferry port.