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We set off from the youth hostel with the weather report saying if was a 90% chance of a clear summit, no change in temperature with height and no wind chill
silly of us to think this was true
The climb up from the hut is a slog but it was just heads down and go for it. We got into the cloud about 2/3 of the way up.
Just in front of us on the CMD were a couple of mountain rescue chaps with a couple of other people and as they started on the arete they stopped and roped up, thinking they knew something we didn't know we did likewise
There was very little wind on the arete so the going was very straight forward and the mist removed the feeling of exposure so it wasn't as bad as I had thought. The climb onto the Ben was steep and the wind was picking up causing significant wind chill.
It was a white out on the top so a compass bearing was used to get past the gully, we bumped into a couple that were going back down #4 gully but as it was 3pm and the light would go in a hour we decided to carry on down the zig-zags and head for home