Snow holing on Ben Nevis

The week leading up to Christmas myself and Rob decided to try our hand at snowholing

Yogi's nob is long and thick. cucum cucum. Yogi's nob is long and thick, he's a cucumbear! Our enthused voices buckled the mini bus roof at 2AM, the poor driver didn't stand a chance against 12 pissed party goers in their 20's returning from the works do to a B&B a few miles away from the recently relieved venue. Me and Rob hatched the plan a couple of weeks previous, I can't remember exactly when but we'd been camping a lot in the recent months and probably after a dose of Ray Mears decided we were going to spend a night in a snow hole. We're both software "engineers" for an internet marketing company, and the run up to Christmas tends to be quite busy on the old marketing front, so the chance of both of us having holiday at the same time was pretty slim, but as luck would have it we both had loads of untaken holiday which the boss decided we needed to use up (otherwise I'd end up with 40 days holiday in 2007). The works Christmas jolly was planned for the Monday before Christmas, so we both booked the rest of that week off, and that's where we placed our carefully laid plan to conquer and temporarily inhabit Scotlands highest mountain. The plan was simple enough: drive from Preston to Telford on the Monday, sit in a company meeting all day, hit the evening event avoiding excessive alcohol consumption, get to bed early and set off for Fort William at 7:30 Tuesday morning. "Yogi wears a condom, carebear! Carebear!". We didn't quite manage to totally abstain from the alcohol, in fact, we were both totally pissed. Rob got back to the B&B and immediately hit the sack, where as I followed the party into someone else's room and had a few more glasses of bubbly, before finally making it to bed at around 4:00AM. I awoke at 7:30 to a blurred view of my roomsmates still fast alseep, briefly thought about a shower before dismissing it's icy trickle as a bad idea, got dressed and headed down to meet Rob. I was far too intoxicated to drive so I handed him the keys and he took the first shift in the drivers seat. We stopped at Carlisle by which time I was sober, refuelled, and swapped seats. We got to Fort Bill at 4:30 where we stocked up on some forgotten supplies and a map at Nevis Sport, then headed back down the road to Kinlochleven, where we had booked a cabin at the McDonald hotel. If you're planning on a stint up there then I can't recomend a better base from which to launch your adventure. Kit check on one one the cabins at the MacDonald hotel The cabins are pretty basic, consisting of four bunks and a heater, but they're clean and comfy and at only £7.50 per person per night, about as good value for money as you're going to get anywhere. They also do seriously tastey food (I had swordfish steak on one visit). We booked in, got our cabin keys and emptied the contents of our rucksacks onto the bunks for a final kit check. Check complete, with nothing major left behind, we headed to the restaurant for tea (dinner to non northerners) and to watch the Liverpool/Arsenal match, which we discovered had been postponed due to fog. I'm not really a footie fan, but Rob, as a devout Liverpool supporter, appeared quite pale at the news of the abandoned game. We supped our one and only pint and headed off to bed at about 8:00PM. Next Page