Climbing Ben Nevis
11 Miles
Prologue: Kenny and Ava (whom you may remember from my
2016 Challenge) picked me up on Friday morning at the Park Hotel in Montrose. We drove all the way back across the country to Fort William. It took 3 hours, or so, to drive back across what had taken me 12 days to walk across. We booked a couple nights at the Glen Nevis Caravan and Camping Park, set up our tents to claim our spots, and then had a meeting about our route for the following day. We didn't want to do the tourist route so we planned to head up the
Carn Mor Dearg Arete. The information from the site said it would take 10-11 hours to do the full loop. After we marked the map with our intended route (since it's not a trail that appears on the map) we headed into town to get dinner. We walked around Fort William a little bit, but went back to camp relatively early as we were going to be up at 6am to get an early start.
We had prepared our gear the night before, only having to add the packed lunches and snacks that were in the cooler. I had to take my tent down since my hiking poles are the main supports. We were in the car ready to go by 6:45ish and drove over to the North Face parking lot. From the parking lot there is a good path through a forest up the initial 500 feet of elevation (give or take). We did take a wrong turn on one of the roads, but once it started going downhill we quickly realized our mistake. Coming out of the forest there's a fence with a stile over it for the walkers to cross. The path then follows the Allt a'Mhuillin for a bit before breaking off SE across the heather. There's a decent path to follow most of the way.
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Ben Nevis obscured by a cloud on the right. On the left is Carn Mor Dearg,
which we would climb up first, and then follow the ridge around to Ben Nevis. |
It was going to be a hot day, it was about 8am and probably close to 80 degrees, and there was no breeze as I'm pretty sure the side of Carn Mor Dearg was blocking it. The climb up was steep and we took frequent breaks to drink and catch our breath. The heat was definitely taking its toll. The temperature started to drop as we neared the top of Carn Mor Dearg and we finally got some wind. We ran into a group of hikers coming down from the top, and also another group passed us from behind.
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Looking back at Fort William near the top of Carn Mor Dearg.
The hikers heading down are in the foreground |
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| Ben Nevis as we climbed up towards Carn Mor Dearg |
The path disappeared into a rock field that we would essentially follow all the way around the ridge and up Ben Nevis. If you've never walked over loose rock like this it's very time consuming because you need to be very careful with each step so you don't roll an ankle, knock a rock loose or take a tumble.
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Looking NE from the summit of Carn Mor Dearg.
The ridge leading up to Aonach Mor and the Allt Daim below it |
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| Me on Carn Mor Dearg |
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The terrain we would be walking over to Carn Dearg Meadhonach (pictured - left)
and then the ridge we would follow behind it heading off to the right that leads to Ben Nevis.
If you click on the photo to make it bigger you can see people walking ahead of me,
one near the snow in the foreground, and a couple farther up the ridge. |
From Carn Mor Dearg it was a long ridgewalk over a lot of rocky terrain. There was even some boulder hopping involved, one or two admittedly made me not too happy, with 300 foot drops off either side and having to step around rocks jutting out over the abyss. On the plus side there were amazing views of the valley between us and Ben Nevis, and also the steep side of Ben Nevis itself.
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| Ben Nevis |
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In the foreground you can see the path we followed. In the background
is the Arete that curves around to connect with Ben Nevis |
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| Looking back at the ridge we came along. |
We had a late lunch at the cairn before the final push up Ben Nevis (NN 171 710).
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| Lunch break at the cairn |
The final push from the cairn was a steep walk up lots of loose boulders. We didn't see a designated path, although according to the map there is one. All three of us sort of made our own path on the way up. Just when we thought the climb would never end the monument at the top of Ben Nevis came into view.
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| The monument...and the crowds of people |
I forgot to mention earlier just how many people come up to Ben Nevis. I've never seen so many people on top of a mountain. There was a queue of people waiting to take pictures on the monument, and people just sitting all around taking in the view. I've never seen anything like it. We spent some time taking pictures at the summit, but it started raining shortly after we got up there and so we began the long descent down the tourist route. There was still a giant line of people coming up the path, some looked absolutely exhausted, and even though they were a few hundred feet from the top I wasn't sure they'd make it.
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| The view from the summit. A bit hazy, but apparenlty it's better than most days |
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| The three of us on the monument |
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| Me on the monument |
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| The old weather station on the summit |
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| Plaque on the summit |
The tourist route is loose slate chunks almost the entire way down to where we broke off to follow a different route back to the North Face parking lot. I would not have wanted to come up that way, it was a total slog. We saw people halfway up who looked just as knackered as the people up top, but they still had hours of walking left to get to the summit. There were people with little water and people in jeans slowly moving to the top. It was possibly the weirdest thing I've seen while hiking.
Eventually we turned off the tourist route onto a path along Lochan Meall an t'Suich that ended abruptly just north of the lochan. From there it was a rough walk through bog and heather to reach the Allt a Mhuilinn. It took us a good half hour to find somewhere cross-able as the water was flowing pretty good. We took our shoes off and waded through calf to knee deep water, all while being viciously attacked by midges. The path was a short walk from the river, and about a 45 minute hike later we were back at the car, exhausted and glad to be done.
It took us between 10 1/2 and 11 hours of walking to do this route, so the estimate on the link above is pretty much dead-on. It was a fun, yet exhausting trip. This trip is definitely something I'm happy to have done while I was in Scotland again. If you're an experienced hiker the hike up the arete is more difficult, but worth it for the scenery.
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