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After missing out on the Christmas Eve jaunt because of a dodgy knee, I was keen to get out and after a text sent to my friend Derek last night, we arranged to meet up and tackle Ben Challum. The forecast looked reasonable for this time of year and having read Rossco's report from yesterday, we thought the mountain shouldn't pose too many problems. We arrived at the layby on the A82 to find a few cars there already so we knew we wouldn't be alone.
We got off to a pacy start through the farm and across the railway but this didn't last long as we left the track and into the notorious bog which had a light dusting of snow on top of it making it doubly slippy. Very quickly the snow started to deepen but we were still making steady progress as we followed the fence up the hill and before long, we were into the cloud.
Still, the waterproof jacket remained in the bag along with my gloves as there was very little wind and the effort to push through the snow was keeping me warm. Every so often the depth of the snow would catch us by surprise and a foot would vanish into the soggy depths below followed by the all to familiar squelch as I pulled my foot out. We were still gaining height but underfoot it was starting to get icy so it was on with the crampons along with the jacket and also my gloves.
As we got closer to the summit, the wind made its presence felt and the snow which had been falling softly for most of the walk was now hurtling into us at great speed although mobility still wasn't too much of a problem. We charged on and after 3 hours made it to the summit in blizzard conditions but it was, as ever, a great feeling. After throwing down half a baguette and some lukewarm soup it was time for the descent.
About 5 minutes after leaving the summit I misjudged a step and ended up face first into the snow. I couldn't help but laugh at myself and for a lot of the descent, one of us would slip or stumble into deep snow but neither of us seemed to mind too much. Derek won the award for best fall of the day when he ended up chest deep in snow in a bog after the soft covering gave way
We continued our decent and eventually the views began to open up but it was obvious that a fair amount of snow had fallen whilst we were on the hill and it slowed our progress. Eventually we made it back to the car after 6 hours and we both agreed that it was a good day out in conditions which at times were testing.