Walking in the Footsteps of Scotland’s Revolutionary Mountain Women

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“Being alone, it’s not so bad,” says my hiking companion Sue, breathless, as we marvel at the vast, lonely mountains around us. I’m two days into a week-long, early-spring trek traversing the peaks of Cairngorms National Park in the Scottish Highlands with an all-women hiking group. As the discussion turns to the merits of hiking and living solo, I’m reminded that this rugged landscape has long been a place of solace and solitude for women in Scotland, a history few knew about until recently.

In my backpack, I’m carrying Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, the writer’s hymn to the Highlands, where she spent most of her life wandering and writing about nature, often alone. The book, which Shepherd wrote near the end of World War II, sat unread for decades until the late 1970s when it was quietly published. It is only now being recognized as one of the most poignant pieces of 20th-century nature writing. (Many contemporary critics and writers have sung Shepherd's praises, and in 2016 the Royal Bank of Scotland designed a £10 note bearing her visage.) Along with Shepherd, the Highlands drew other 18th- and 19th-century artists and adventurers, including the poet Anne Grant and writer and photographer Isabella Bird. The creative works inspired by their time in the mountains provided an alternative narrative to the dominant, oppressive discourse surrounding women in the outdoors, a shift that paralleled the women’s suffrage movement in the country.

Spend a day in the Scottish Highlands and it’s easy to see what drew these freethinkers there; the same magnetic pull I had felt for years. Sloping mountains dusted with snow roll like cresting waves in every direction, and lower down, heather-blanketed hillsides are studded with gnarled Scots pine. It’s a fierce, melancholy beauty that seeps into your bones. Still, at the beginning of our seven-day journey, led by ecotourism company Wilderness Scotland, we’ve already seen the mercurial weather shift, in minutes, from blue skies to sideways snow. Today, our climb to Creag a’ Chalamain (Pigeon Rock), one of the Cairngorms’ lesser summits, has led us along icy riverbanks and up a trail obscured by knee-deep snow.

It’s tough enough to tackle this terrain in sturdy hiking boots and waterproof outerwear; it’s nearly impossible to imagine doing so in the bloomers and petticoats donned by the pioneering women who ventured out here hundreds of years ago, an activity that was met with outrage. 

“Going off on your own in the muddy, dirty countryside with other women was really frowned upon,” says Paula Williams, a curator at the National Library of Scotland who spearheaded a recent exhibit that celebrates the unsung history of Scotland’s mountain women. “Women weren’t mentioned anywhere in the history of Scottish mountaineering and yet I knew that they climbed,” says Williams. (Even prior to the 18th century, dairy maids followed transhumance routes through the mountains.) “I kept asking myself, where were we?”

Thanks to the rebels who bucked convention and quite literally rolled up their skirts to shed the trammels of Victorian society, our group of women is out here exploring the Highlands as we please. And it’s not just us: tour companies like Wilderness Scotland added women-only departures to their roster after they saw a spike in demand from women in 2017. “We’ve seen a lot of growth in women-only hiking trips because there’s been a need for it,” says Rachael Gavan, head of travel at Wilderness Scotland. “Those trips sold out this year.” 

The wind picks up speed and soon we have to brace ourselves, as a steady 35-mile-per hour torrent pummels us, our jackets snapping and billowing out behind us like kites. It’s a deafening howl that feels like it could lift me off my feet. “Whooo!” hollers one of my fellow hikers, Mary, stretching her arms out wide and leaning back into the gale as we reach the peak. Soon the remaining six of us join her, the wind at our backs and hiking poles thrust in the air, exhilarated.

Toward the end of the trip, we set out to hike to the peak of Sgor Gaoith, a 3,668-foot Munro—defined as a hill over 3,000 feet in elevation with a drop of 250 feet between the next one—meaning “Peak of the Wind” in Gaelic. It’s not wind we encounter today, but mounting spring flurries. The farther up we climb, the lower the temperature drops, and a gossamer tide of fog and snow sweeps across the landscape. Soon, I can’t see past my outstretched arm. After consulting map and compass, our guide decides we can push on, and we form a single-file line, our bright rainbow of jackets the only color in a dizzying, white world where it’s hard to differentiate earth from sky.

Although the whiteout means we won’t be able to spot the view of Loch Einich usually afforded from the peak, the cold, colorless realm we’ve entered is a thrilling alternate dimension, and the beauty of the Highlands still appears in subtle ways: the tracks of a red fox in the snow, the solitary, staccato call of a ptarmigan, snow buntings huddled spectral in the mist. I’m reminded of a theme that permeates much of Shepherd’s lyrical work: that time in the mountains is about more than conquering the summit, which has dominated much of the mountaineering accounts written by men.

In The Living Mountain, Shepherd writes, “Often the mountain gives itself most completely when I have no destination, when I reach nowhere in particular, but have gone out merely to be with the mountain as one visits a friend with no intention but to be with him.” 

I have to agree: It’s our journey’s quiet moments, when I find myself alone at the edge of an emerald loch or a glass-like bog the color of Guinness, that stay with me.

How to hike the Cairngorms yourself

The three-hour train ride from Edinburgh to Cairngorms National Park is a beautiful introduction to the region. Pulling away from the Medieval city’s Waverley Station, the cityscape slowly recedes, replaced by a blur of yawning pastures and bucolic emerald hills, eventually arriving in Aviemore. The small town serves as the park’s adventure basecamp, where visitors can check in to guesthouses like Ravenscraig, a historic Victorian villa turned bed and breakfast.

Ecotourism company Wilderness Scotland organizes women-only trips in the Scottish Highlands, and across the country. In 2023, the company is set to lead 14 women-only departures, including a Wilderness Retreat in the Cairngorms and Central Highlands, which combines trekking with cold-water swimming, yoga, and learning survival skills like navigation. If a day hike is more your speed, numerous walking tour companies offer guided hikes in the Cairngorms, ranging from a few hours to a full day—and with enough experience, many of the park’s Munros can be tackled without a guide, too.