Ian Sykes - In the Shadow of Ben Nevis

by Hamish MacInnes

My association with Ian Sykes (Spike) goes back over fifty years to when he was a young lad on the RAF Mountain Rescue Team based out of Kinloss. One might find it anomalous (after half a century) that I could possibly remember the circumstances of our first meeting. But remember I do with crystalline clarity: New Year, the Cuillin, Isle of Skye, 1963. What should have been a festive evening turned ever more grim by the hour: climbers missing, many hours overdue, conditions hellishly icy and Arctic.

So began the now legendary Skye New Year call-out the longest and most protracted rescue ever enacted in Scotland. I was there as was Spike (with the Kinloss Team). He presents here the RAF version of the rescue for the first time.

There is an immediacy and accessibility in his telling of this heart-wrenching, compelling story as if he were an old friend recounting the tale to you before a smoldering peat fire in some Highland pub on a winter night. Its all here: the pathos of dead bodies, undaunted bravery and courage, holiday merrymakers enlisted as ill-equipped rescuers with primitive equipment. Days without sleep culminating in numbed reactions and sheer exhaustion. In the end there are weeping survivors and broken hearts as well as broken stretchers.

Many friends of mine were involved in this epic and, in Spikes telling, the tale takes on an almost cinematic breadth and sweep except one must keep reminding oneself: it really happened! I will never forget the culminating boat journey home with dead bodies lashed to the deck and bottles of whisky circulating among the fifty or so rescuers jammed in the hold below singing, It was sad when the great ship went down. It was a sobering experience that none of us will ever forget.

For many, an epic like the rescue on Skye might be thought of as a high point in a lifetime but not Spike he was just getting started and he recounts here a good many further lively tales of explorations, adventures, mishaps but, as well, and of equal importance to him, the enduring bonds of friendship and camaraderie, be it with man or beast.

An example of this is Antarctica, which occupied a considerable chunk of Spikes life. Spike gives us a deep insight into what it is like living day to day with a dog team. He captures the harsh realities of life at the edge and the end of the world and so brilliantly expounds the tremendous bond between the huskies and their handler each relying on the other for survival. By sheer coincidence, Spikes posting to Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey highlights the end of the era where dogs were the main form of Antarctic travel, replaced if you can imagine by the combustion engine, as being far more eco-friendly! Spike captures it all beautifully, as if taking you by the hand, as if bringing you along on the journey to the end of the world.

For myself, oddly enough one of the highlights of the book is Spikes tale of re-imagining himself as a visionary outdoor entrepreneur and, no doubt, one of the first eco-adventure capitalists in all of Scotland never mind the Highlands. His animated recounting of setting up Nevisport, which he and his friend Ian Sutherland built into a national chain of mountaineering shops, and then the construction of the Nevis Range a world-class ski resort and mountain-bike centre, is both awe inspiring and side-splittingly funny at times can you imagine in this day and age your shop being picketed by protesters because they want you closed on the Sabbath, which just happens to be your busiest trading day of the week? As a testament to Spikes inspiring and wonderful spirit, he not only won the day, but soon most of the town converted to Sunday opening. When you consider that much of what you see today about Fort William and its environs even the moniker the Outdoor Capital of the UK is directly due to Spikes life-long commitment and love affair with the people and wild places of the West Highlands, one can only be inspired by what he has accomplished.

In the Shadow of Ben Nevis is Spikes life story it brims with passion, resilience, honesty, patience, courage, adaptability, and a fair amount of intrigue. To this day he remains remarkably self-effacing and kindhearted to one and all for all his success and achievements. To that end I shall call it quits here if I carry on any further it would be most embarrassing!