Snow holing on Ben Nevis

Page 2: Getting up the Ben

We awoke early Wednesday morning after a cracking nights sleep, stuffed our sleeping bags into their sacks, changed into more mountain friendly atire, and headed back to the restaurant for some breaky. Stuffed with full English, toast, coffee and orange juice, I handed our cabin keys back and we jumped in the car. 30 minutes later we were in the Ben Nevis north face carpark, donned our boots and did a final gear check, whilst having a quick chat with another group doing the same next to us. They planned on heading up to the CIC that day, camping near by, and climbing the next. We on the other hand, planned on topping out that day, which is perfectly doable, although hard work if you're not in top condition - like Rob and me. After a quick look at the avalanche report on the way out of the carpark, we began the walk-in, taking the path through the woods. There's actually a more direct way, via the fire breaks, but it's steep and hardwork, and with all that kit on our back and bacon in our bellies, I didn't bother mentioning it to Rob, just in case he actually wanted to go that way. It wasn't long before we'd warmed up and got into the swing of things, and before we knew it we were out of the trees and headed up the path to the CIC proper. It's a nice walk in with a great view of the cloud clad north face ever increasing in size as you get closer to it's base. We must have really had some pace going because we never caught sight of the other group, even after a longish stop for Rob to tend to sore feet. We eventually arrived at the CIC hut, where a couple of chaps were busy doing something with what looked like a TV antenna. I was busy looking for the gully we wanted... I'd been up the Ben a few times before and Rob hadn't been to Scotland since he was a toddler, so I took charge in route finding, although even at this late stage I still wasn't certain which way we were going to go up. My excuse was because we needed to 'play it by ear' with the snow conditions, but in reality it was because I couldn't remember which way up was. Rob's mountaineering expereince was pretty limited, so it had to be something dead easy, not requiring a rope - because I'd not brought one. I was veering towards gully 4, but at the last minute spotted another route which I'd done before so headed back past the CIC, accross the stream and straight up the hill towards a gully. The name of the route completely escapes me, but I shall endevour to find out before I get to the end of this little write up. Going back and editing seems like cheating to me :) At the bottom of the currently nameless gully, we paused to get out the crampons. Even by now the ground was pretty steep so I hacked a little ledge in the snow with the adze and sat down to strap on my spikey foot clobber. Now equiped for the gully proper, refreshed from a quick gulp of water and gob full of brazil nuts, we began making our way into and up the gully. It was initially fairly steep but pretty easy going, making foot holes in the reasonably frozen snow we plodded onto a narrowing where a chunk of rock restricts your world to 4-5ft in width and gets slightly steeper. It was here that the snow suddenly became absolutely shite for climbing up. Every foothold I tried to place disolved under my mammoth 9.5 stone. I turned around to see Rob 15m behind and decided to stick my axe into something that looked fairly sold - frozen turf - and wait for him to catch up. Once he was within reach I gave it another go, and once again all my footsteps fell away under me. Now, I don't scare easily, but I have a this thing about avalances, I don't like them, and this shitty snow unnerved me. I turned to Rob to voice my concerns and rather ashamedly suggested we perhaps consider going down. We stood in silence for about 30 seconds before I finally thought 'fuck it'. I slammed my axe in deep and pulled myself up the gully by a couple of feet, and kept doing it until I was near the top of the constriction. I don't like being beaten so was glad I had bullied my way out of this one. Rob, literally, followed in my footsteps and we began to make our way straight up the gully. After about 50m I stopped, tilted my head back and stared at the cornice above. It wasn't huge, but it was steep immediately underneith and since we had no rope or protection, I was again a bit concerened about continueing, so after a brief chat, we backtracked, intending to traverse the gully and climb the ridge, a route which I'd done before. Rob, who's sack was considerably heavier than mine was not impressed at the wasted effort spent ascending the gully direct and I recall him having a bit of a moan. To get to the ridge you need to traverse a steep slope for somewhere between 100 and 200 meters. I thoughtfully let Rob know that it looks like prime avalanche ground and took the lead while he, even more thoughtfully, waited by a rock to see if I made is accross. Previous Page Next Page