Am Basteir

About Am Basteir

Am Basteir - 'the baptizer' - is a 934-metre peak in the northern Cuillin on Skye, and its form is unusual even by Cuillin standards: a narrow blade of rock, often set alongside the Inaccessible Pinnacle for comparison. Its western end falls away vertically.

The commonly used line starts at Sligachan, following the left bank of the Allt Dearg Beag for about 5 km to a lochan in Coire a' Bhasteir, then up scree to the bealach on the main ridge between Sgurr nan Gillean and Am Basteir. From there roughly 200 metres of scrambling along the east ridge leads to the top, interrupted by the 'bad step', a three-metre notch. A rockfall means it can no longer simply be scrambled down: it must be avoided, downclimbed or abseiled. A scrambling line on the south face bypasses it, and can be reascended on the way back. Walkers arriving from Bruach na Frithe can skirt below the peak to reach the same bealach.

Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Am Basteir (CC BY-SA 4.0). Heights, prominence and grid references come from the Database of British & Irish Hills, not from Wikipedia.

Access rights here

General position for Scotland — local byelaws, seasonal restrictions and closures can override it. Full details: access rights in Scotland · check another location.

Daylight at this summit today

Sunrise

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Sunset

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Daylight

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Civil twilight ends

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Computed astronomically for 57.248, -6.203. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.

Finding the summit

The recorded summit point is cairn. On broad or flat summits the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.

Survey method

obvious summit

Record revised

22-Jun-14

Drop measured from

NG465252 · 885 m

Survey notes are field observations recorded in the Database of British & Irish Hills (v18.3, CC BY 4.0) by the hill-surveying community.

Which hill this one belongs to

Am Basteir is not counted as an independent hill in its own right. In prominence terms it belongs to Sgurr nan Gillean (966 m) — the nearest Marilyn you can reach from this summit without first dropping below its key col, 885 m.

Grouping is by prominence alone: a summit belongs to the nearest higher Marilyn it connects to without a deeper intervening col. Over a large massif that can gather hills no one would walk in a single day, and which few would describe as parts of the same mountain — it is a measure of independence, not a suggested route.

Nearest listed peaks