I’ve been making memories today! The weather and conditions came good for us and rewarded us with an unbelievable day out, climbing Ben Nevis. With such short daylight hours at this time of year, a 05:30 alarm call was required. We set off walking just before 7am by headtorch up the frozen path from Glen Nevis.
The skies soon became clear and there was an Alpine feel, although it was bitterly cold.
Once we got above the valley mist, the moonlight lit our way. Magical.
Around 08:30, the sun began to make an appearance and the distance mountains all glowed pink.
It was quite a view. We were especially smug that the valley remained filled with freezing fog and we were up in the sunshine. (Albeit -7°C type sunshine!).
We made steady but slow progress up the mountain. Without any wind and cold temps, the snow remained deep and powdery, so we didn’t need crampons.
Got to the summit at 11:30 and had the highest mountain entirely to ourselves.
The shelter was caked in a good layer of rime Ice.
As was the weather station!
We had our sandwiches in the shelter and Nick even produced a hip flask, much to the older lads delight. We had good cause to celebrate!
After half an hour and a lot of staring at the 360° views, we started to make our descent.
This was much faster and although dodging the ice bits on the path was tricky, we were down in time to make last orders in the Nevis Sport cafe for a round of hot chocolates.
Fort William chip shop provided some sustenance before we set off on the two hour drive further north towards Torridon. We got to our next bunkhouse at Strathcarron, just after eight. The drive required extreme concentration as the roads were very icy and had snow on them still. The minibus thermometer was reading -10°C and we passed three crashed cars along the way and about 5 abandoned cars! We made it unscathed, to where the wood burner was lit and we enjoyed a good shower and a hot desert of Christmas pudding, chocolate log and custard. The diet of champions today!
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