Long term hill pal Graham Pascall had taken early retirement and along with Joe Coll, we reckoned it should be marked with a weekend in the mountains. Graham supported me in compleating (yes …that is the correct spelling) the Munros and it was correct that we added a couple to his ever decreasing list of 3000ft summits to do.
Amazingly, he had avoided two big ones – Ben Nevis and Carn Mor Dearg. As such, a weekend in the Fort was chosen. The usual weather watching showed promise with great conditions forecast despite a low pressure sitting over Scotland. It seemed appropriate for a weekend in the Fort!
Joe and myself jumped the train north whilst Graham took an easy drive to meet us there. We settled down with coffee and cake before getting to chatting with a lass from Liverpool. Views heading north were seriously impressive. Up past Arrochar and the Cobbler before Tyndrum and Ben Lui etc ... I made a noise about a night ascent ...Joe ignored me. We arrived just about on time and met up with Graham who seemed much happier not working any more. Stocked up on food before heading to the bunkhouse. Opted for evening meal in the pub since that was where they served the beer :-)
Early rise next morning since it was going to be a fairly long day. With snow at all levels, we were on the path just before 8am - late if you are climbing and early if you are walking. We made reasonable time up the icy path until just after the half way lochan where the snow got deeper and deeper. Reaching the summit was incredible - it is easy when you get a good day to say it is the best ever ....but this was the best ever winter day on the Ben! Took loads of photographs ...then took some more. It seemed wrong not to try and record everything. We spent some time enjoying the summit which was nice before heading down to the "interesting" part of the day ...the Carn Mor Dearg arete! With the amount of snow and folks already along it, the majority of the technical sections were very simple indeed. Chatted to some of the LSCC girls who were on a club meet before reaching the summit of Carn Mor Dearg itself and a fast descent down into Coire Leis. I went for the van whilst Graham & Joe made their way down the track to the North Face car park. A top day indeed.
Next day was a far more leisurely day out Corbetting on Garbh Bheinn above Kinlochleven.
Huge congrats to Graham and all the best fir yir retirement !
Me, Joe and Graham on the summit of the Ben
No comments:
Post a Comment