Tuesday 20th July 2004
The first time I went up Ben Nevis was immediately after walking the West Highland Way and frankly I wasn’t impressed. While considering the ascent afterwards I decided that the problem was that the path is too easy, a bridlepath for tourists and I got very little thrill out of it. There are too many zigzags that mean it isn’t very steep at any point, in fact it took me almost as long to go up as I did coming back down. I was finished in less than five hours! And then there’s the summit: besides the trig point and the well-known ruin of an observatory there is a war memorial, which is good, except that it’s been littered by dozens of personal memorials left by many people over the last five years. It’s beginning to look like a dumping ground complete with badges, banners and the pictures of tragically departed children. The worst thing about these personal memorials is that the older, more important, memorials have been callously cast aside and broken. I was not desperate to go up again.
Back down I visited the Glen Nevis Visitor Centre again before heading back to the hostel where I considered what to do for the rest of the holiday. The weather forecast for this walk was for a good start but deteriorating later (it was still raining when I wrote the first draft of this entry in the hostel later in the afternoon, and it actually started raining while I was on the summit). The forecast for the next day looked like it may clear as the day progressed, so an idea occurred to me to do a walk in the hills to the south of Glen Nevis, in the Mamores, before heading to Fort William and catching a bus to Loch Ness. Certainly the Great Glen Way didn't appeal to me, which is what doing the West Highland Way had taught me. I have been up Ben Nevis again since this report was originally written (the picture above was taken on that return trip, in much better weather) and I have to say that I enjoyed the ascent much more the second time as I went up via the CMD arête. The report on that trip is here.
Back down I visited the Glen Nevis Visitor Centre again before heading back to the hostel where I considered what to do for the rest of the holiday. The weather forecast for this walk was for a good start but deteriorating later (it was still raining when I wrote the first draft of this entry in the hostel later in the afternoon, and it actually started raining while I was on the summit). The forecast for the next day looked like it may clear as the day progressed, so an idea occurred to me to do a walk in the hills to the south of Glen Nevis, in the Mamores, before heading to Fort William and catching a bus to Loch Ness. Certainly the Great Glen Way didn't appeal to me, which is what doing the West Highland Way had taught me. I have been up Ben Nevis again since this report was originally written (the picture above was taken on that return trip, in much better weather) and I have to say that I enjoyed the ascent much more the second time as I went up via the CMD arête. The report on that trip is here.
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