by Sweeto » Thu Aug 28, 2014 8:48 pm
Date walked: 28/08/2014
Time taken: 7.5 hours
Distance: 17.5 km
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What can I say, a sunny day by Ben Nevis, I started parking at North wall car park starting at 11am
The walk through the forest is steep and short, taking me 25 minutes to get to the open hill, positively breathless the whole forest walk not taking any breaks, ten reaching the open hill to be presented with the enormous Ben Nevis to the right of view taking up a good portion of the skyline, carn mor dearg is straight ahead but all that can be seen is a false summit.
Continue along main path for a few minutes before a grassy path that has had its fair share of footfall presents itself on your left, warning!!!! have appropriate footwear' this is a boggy path for half a mile and steep and energy draining. You will see rocks forming a straight line up above, this is where the rock path begins and continues to summit. There are a few false summits but eventually you will see the proper summit appear to the right. A few cairns up the top and then the summit...GREAT VIEWS.
Look to the right and the arête to Ben Nevis presents itself, not going to lie at its widest it's only 3m across and big drops either side. Not for the faint hearted and should only be attempted if comfortable with scrambling' you may well be crossing on all 4's at times as I know I was.
And then your across and after a full on scrambling climb of about 40m your at a cairn and half an hour to an hour away from your final summit....have a look and take it in, it is ultra steep but short in distance, it can't be more than 700m forward to summit, in that though I would guesstimate it's 250m climb, all rocks, all scrambling.
Then your their on the summit, it is flat, rocky and has a few buildings on top too, I was lucky it was clear you could see for miles and miles and every Munro between Ben Nevis and Ben lomond.
Your return takes you down the tourist path which to be honest looked extremely boring, nothing but rocks and zig zag paths until you reach the picturesque loch, take the path to the right to the end of the loch...your choice from here you can follow the path to the right which makes you backtrack or you can do what I done and just go down the grass, it's boggy but quicker, you will need to cross the river at the valley and then back to the main oath to the forest, then 20-30 mins to the car park, once going down the forest track make sure and take the non smooth path to save time, then voila!!!! Completed
Hope your climbs go well I got some cracking photos from this one