I chose the climb from Talyllyn, a way known as the Minffordd Path. Some say the path from the north – the Fox’s Path, which climbs the cliffier aspect of the mountain directly – is the best. From the north Cadair appears as a massif of three summits, split into upturned prows in several places by aggressive staircases of ridge. It appears impossibly impregnable, and impressively immense. The Fox’s Path offers superb views of the Irish Sea, Dolgellau below, and the bristly Cyfrwy Arête, probably the most blisteringly dramatic ridge climb south of Scotland. But this route doesn’t take you into the mountain’s inner keep; it climbs this northern wall and, once atop, walks the ramparts to the highest point, missing one of the main arenas of the mountain. Plus, instead of one hard ascent, the climb from Minffordd is a languid, gentle rise, followed by one mercifully swift but screeching pull. To me, it seemed to be the best choice to appreciate the many levels on which Cadair engages the senses. Plus, with memories still raw from the Black Mountain, it clearly seemed the preferable option – especially since, having not learned my lesson in the Brecon Beacons, I had a summit sleepover planned.
Rounding the corner at the Gwesty Minffordd Hotel, I swung immediately right into the smooth, wooded car park. I was late. Dinner in the seductive surroundings of a fast-food restaurant – and many stops along the road to admire the views amidst the day’s deepening shadows – meant that my plan for getting to the summit by sunset was now on a perilously tight schedule. In my pocket was a mobile phone newly loaded with GPS mapping software, which I’d decided to bring as a backup to my map following the collapse of my planning on the Black Mountain. It was not only prudent, but genuinely useful; although keen to find my way by my nose as much as possible, with traditional navigation as a failsafe, I had no qualms about using reliable gadgetry to ease my way. If anything, it would help me keep my eyes on the landscape rather than buried in a map. Pulling my overnight rucksack from the boot, I hastily chucked in a few provisions already bagged up in waterproof bags – some of which I’d labelled with helpful words like ‘food’, some of which I hadn’t – doubled-back to check the car was locked and set off into the mild evening air in something of a fluster, giving a quick look around the car park as I went. It was deserted but for one other car. With a plunging feeling I realised its owner might have similar designs on inhabiting the summit for a night, but just as I approached the gate onto the path I saw two walkers emerging into the car park, looking pink and happy. One, a greying man with a map case around his neck, smiled as he held the gate for me. ‘All yours,’ he said. And with that, I had one of Britain’s most atmospheric and intricately legendary mountains all to myself.
The mythology associated with mountains is prolific, and pervades cultures regardless of time or place. The reason for this isn’t really a mystery: they are the land’s most obvious, most dramatic physical feature. But those early peoples who settled beside mountains didn’t see them as objectives, or assets; they feared them.
Since the earliest ages of civilisation the mountains have been the homes of gods and demons. Like the sea – that other great unconquerable – the mountains’ physical size and fickle moods meant that they were seen as both forbidding and forbidden. Although many people saw them as dark places of evil and the meddling of spirits, some optimistic cultures viewed them as protectors, even mothers. But neither saw them as places for people to tread.
Understandably, it’s the most striking, massive or isolated peaks that demand the most attention and stir the most potent awe, and it’s hardly surprising that such mountains across the world have become sacred.
Kailash, an enormous, free-standing peak in Tibet, is perhaps the most famous of these, amongst both mountaineers and students of religious philosophy alike. Unfeasibly dramatic, 6,638-metre Kailash rises sheer, a topographical exclamation mark ascending so drastically from the mud-brown of the Tibetan plateau the vision of it is surreal from all sides. Located near the source of several rivers, including the Indus and Brahmaputra – which collectively irrigate land supporting over a billion people – the mountain is sacrosanct to several religions. In Hinduism, Kailash is said to be the home of Shiva, destroyer of ignorance and illusion. Buddhists believe the mountain is the place where the Buddha Demchok sits on the summit in eternal meditation. Many believe the summit is the final step to heaven; yet all consider that stepping onto its slopes leads to death, damnation or the opening of Shiva’s third eye – a highly undesirable event said to trigger the end of the universe.
Pilgrims to Kailash brave altitude and often brutal sun to be in the mountain’s presence. A common form of worship is to circumnavigate it, some 33 miles of rough path and sharp rock. Many feel suitably moved to make this journey in penance, prostrating themselves at full length on the ground, indenting the dust with their fingers, resting their heads on the rock and saying a prayer, repeating this for the entire length of the walk. This can take several weeks, after which the successful pilgrims return home, often with enormous welts on their fingers, feet and foreheads, and one hopes enlightenment in their souls.
No mortal has climbed Kailash; to do so would insult those to whom the mountain is sacred. As for immortals, it’s written in legend that 1,000 years ago, the Tantric Buddhist Milarepa challenged Naro Bön-Chung of the Tibetan Bön religion to a contest decided by a race to the mountain’s summit, although their method of ascent cannot be strictly considered ‘mountaineering’ by today’s standards.* Several Western mountaineers have come close, but either declined their permits or found themselves pressured into doing so by others in the mountaineering community. One of these – the Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner – stated of Kailash: ‘If we conquer this mountain, then we conquer something in people’s souls.’
In the Indian Himalaya above Sikkim, Kangchenjunga – the third-highest mountain in the world – is another such sacred summit. Again, the mountain’s physical presence is striking, and directly linked to the reverence it’s accorded by those of the Kirant faith. Its name means ‘Five Treasures of the Sacred Snows’, referring to the mountain’s five summits and the holy repositories they are said to harbour: gold, silver, gems, grain and holy books. As with Kailash, to step on its very summit is considered a desecration, and in 1955 – in a most admirable demonstration of self-restraint – the British climbers Joe Brown and George Band, having just made the first ascent of the mountain, stopped several feet short of the pristine snow cone on the very top in deference to this belief. This tradition continued on every ascent until 1980, when members of a large Japanese expedition reputedly trampled all over it.
Closer to home, mountains have been accorded similar – if somewhat more niche – respect. Above the southern Lake District, the Old Man of Coniston is a stately 803-metre mountain that draws many walkers to it for pleasurable day walks. Most don’t know it’s also considered the fifth most sacred mountain in the world by a religious sect called the Aetherius Society. To them, the mountain is a store of spiritual energy that, when unlocked by prayer vigils, is said to radiate out to those in need across the globe. The focus of this is said to be a table-shaped rock located just north of the summit, near which the group often congregates to pray. Basing their beliefs on the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence – or ‘gods from space’ – Aetherians see mother earth as a deity who sacrificed herself to provide a home for a flawed, brutal humankind. The religion was founded by Dr George King, who in 1958 was visited whilst climbing Holdstone Down in North Devon by a ‘great being of love’, who sent streams of energy through him deep into the mountain, making it forever a holy repository. King was then instructed to travel to eighteen other mountains and ‘charge’ them with spiritual potency. Nine of these lie in the British Isles, the others being iconic (or obscure) peaks abroad.* Aetherius pilgrimages are organised to these mountains to this day.
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