Woke with a jolt on the second alarm at 6am this morning. I'd slept right through the first! Given the lack of daylight hours at this time of year, an early start is required for a winter ascent of Ben Nevis. We were pretty fast getting out of the hut and began the walk by the light of head torches.
There was a lot of snow about, but luckily for us, there was a team of three ahead of us, conveniently breaking trail for us, which saved us a lot of energy.
Up by the lochan, once the sun had risen, the views were superb with low sunlight catching the tops.
There was a lot of cloud about, which gave a wintery feeling to the day. Two of the group, decided to head back shortly past the lochan, and the remainder continued upwards toward the cloud base.
Near the top of the zig-zags, we lost the sunlight and entered the cloud zone...
From then on, the wind got stronger, the pace got slower and the temperature got colder.
Eventually, we had to make the decision to call it a day, and turn around. There were mixed feelings within the group, with some disappointed, some relieved and some impartial. We had to stay as a team, so the decision was to go down. Before retreating, we dug into a snowdrift to get a little shelter while we ate some food. The windchill soon cooled us down. It was no place to be hanging around...
Rain set in soon after and the other team above caught us up, saying that conditions on top were atrocious, which helped to cheer up those who had wanted to continue. We had made a good decision!
Light rain accompanied us back to Glen Nevis, which we reached some eight hour or so after leaving it, but at least we still had sone daylight... Back at the hut, we had a Scottish Christmas dinner, with Haggis!
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