An intrepid mum who left South Africa for Perthshire after she and her young daughter were mugged at gunpoint has found therapy climbing Munros.
And Jess Macdonald is sure to have passed on the hobby to her youngest son, climbing 10 peaks with him on her back before he reached his first birthday.
Jess (32) took her baby boy Connor up his first Munro when he was just six weeks old.
She went out from her home in Crieff to walk Ben Chonzie with her mum and dad, carrying her little boy in a sling across her front.
Connor celebrated his first birthday on Tuesday and just days before, he and Jess marked their tenth Munro together.
This most recent climb - up Ben Lawers - was the fulfilment of a challenge mum-of-two Jess had set herself, to get him to the top of 10 Munros (the name given to Scottish mountains of 3000 feet or higher) before he turned one.
“Climbing 10 peaks before his first birthday is a very small goal by Munro-bagging standards. It won’t even be a record as far as babies go, although I think he will be the first baby to have submitted so many carried solely by his mum,” Jess explained.
Connor’s first word is not the usual ‘dad’ or ‘mum’ but “look!” - he no doubt picked this up from his mum’s expression at seeing Scotland from a breathtaking viewpoint.
Jess shared how she has found healing from a series of traumatic experiences by moving to Perthshire and walking the high tops.
She and her husband Grant and daughter Maia, now five years old, had been living in South Africa.
The family came to the UK - where Jess was originally from - in 2021 because of the crime.
Jess and Maia were mugged at gun-point, their car hijacked, several break-ins happened and a bullet just missed hitting Grant in the head. They didn’t feel safe.
“Then no sooner were we starting a new life in Crieff where Grant was beginning a job as head of gardens at Crieff Hydro, when I found out I was pregnant,” Jess told the PA.
“I had wanted to get out on the hills and give myself a bit of therapy from being in a wonderful safe place, but with this news I put hill-climbing on hold until Connor was born.
“Lots of people suggest that having a baby means you can’t go on adventures, that everything has to stop, but I found the opposite to be true for me. We met people – everybody wanted to know about my son and our mission, I made countless friends, it was a joyful widening of my world beyond the nursery.
“I have struggled with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and anxiety for most of my life.
“Childhood therapy helped me to overcome the most crippling aspects of my diagnosis so that, as an adult, I’m able to function pretty well. In fact, my tendency towards obsession and the need for perfection can be positive – I’m a hard worker with great attention to detail and an almost terrier-like commitment to setting and achieving goals.
“But, becoming a mum to my daughter and four years later, my son, has been both my greatest joy and a real test of my mental health.
“The Munro challenge was a decision triggered by a desperate need to escape the confines of a house and body lost to postpartum madness – to reclaim a tiny piece of headspace and prove that the adventurous core of my being, the part that makes me me, had not been lost in the exhilarating, terrifying, exhausting process of becoming a mother for the second time.
“Our first climb was Ben Chonzie, close to home in Crieff. When I took him up the first few Munros last summer he was easy to please as I just breastfed him on demand.
“He slept peacefully, comfortable against my heartbeat and protected from the elements inside my windproof coat.
“When we got back down, I was buoyant. I couldn’t remember feeling so empowered as a mother. I was a warrior, enjoying a triumphant picnic while breastfeeding my beautiful boy, who was as unfazed by the whole experience as he might have been if he’d simply spent the afternoon asleep in his cot at home.
“Yeah, we’ve had one or two interesting nappy changes in the heather, but he was always smiling and as he got bigger, clearly loved our ‘Munro-bagging’ habit.”
Jess didn’t let things fall to chance: “I researched proper mountain forecast sites that would give me a realistic expectation of conditions at summit level. I committed to only ever climbing during a favourable weather window, and always turning back whenever conditions changed unexpectedly or if either of us simply wasn’t feeling it.
“I invested in clothing and equipment that would help protect us from the elements in the event that we were caught out. I learned some navigation skills and carefully researched which peaks were the least technical and safest to attempt with a baby in tow.
“All winter we were stuck with only eight of 10 summits chalked off and I was starting to lose hope that the weather would give us the chance to finish the final two but, on May 8, we made it up Beinn Ghlas and Ben Lawers with two days to spare before his big day of turning one.
“I don’t climb solo for safety reasons, so I climbed the first with my mum and dad, the last with my dad, and others along the way with my brother and my good friend, Joanne Wilson.
“It meant a lot to me to be able to share this experience with my family, especially after not seeing them for a long time due to Covid travel restrictions when we lived in South Africa.
“It’s been an amazing adventure, and so cool to see him grow from a tiny baby (when he’d sleep through most of the hike) to now, when he’s mostly wide awake, smiling at everyone on the trail, pointing at everything and commanding me to “look”.
“He loves being outside and seems to be happiest when we’re adventuring. I’m so proud of my little mountain man.”
Jess has more pictures on instagram https://www.instagram.com/macs_tracks/.
