In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:
Ah happy memories.
Twenty years ago I "accidentally" did a S to N traverse.
A good friend of mine (Dave Wynne-Jones) and I went up to Skye for a week of climbing and scrambling at Whit Week. We arrived very late in the evening and of course slept in the next morning. When we did get up it was a fantastic sunny day - not a common occurrence in that part of the world! So we decided to go and explore the ridge to get accustomed to the environment.
We climbed to the top of Gars-bheinn about lunch time and thought we'd go north for a few hours to get a feel for how we were going. We had day hill food and water and no bivi gear at all. Equipment wise we had a single 45m 9mm and two slings and Karabiners each, of which two were HMS.
Anyway, to cut a long and potentially boring story short, we made it as far as the In-Pinn by about 8pm. After abseiling off we looked at each other and agreed that we felt well and the weather looked good. The only problem was we were very short of water and we had only a little food left. Despite this we decided to press on for a while rather than descend to our tent at Glen Brittle. Soon after we stopped just north of Sgurr Thormaid. We then "endured" a very cold bivi in just the clothes we had with us. I don't think I slept at all sitting upright leaning against a small rock face.
The dawn came mercifully early at around 3:30am and we ate the last of our food, in my case three digestive biscuits and a Kraft Cheese slice!! The last of the water went down too.
On we went reaching An Dorus soon where we found a small amount of hard old snow. We pushed this into our water bottles and then put them down our jackets to melt.
The rest of the ridge is a bit of a blur due to being dehydrated and hungry!
We finally arrived at Sgurr nan Gillean at 09:00ish, just in time to meet some early day walkers arriving.
On the way down we guzzled gallons (or so it felt) of water from a burn and arrived exhausted at Sligachan. I remember celebrating with a pint and being so hungry it went straight to my head and I had to sit down! Dave hitched a lift back to Glen Brittle to collect the car and come and get me.
So, our little adventure was successful, but I recognise that it was certainly "on a knife edge". I wouldn't recommend anyone going with that little kit, food or water!