The forecast was great for a late afternoon blast up the CMD but the weather was looking a little disappointing compared to the glowing MWIS forecast as we arrived at the north face car park.
Things were beginning to look a bit more promising as we neared the first summit (and talk of ultra distance races died away….. gulp!). The Ben was threatening to clear but never quite managed it before we descended into cloud for the arete proper.
The arete was fairly slippy in the damp conditions but good fun as always and we only had one small canine logistic incident when Ian’s dog got a little stuck. As we came round off the arete and headed up the final slog up to the summit of Ben Nevis we broke through the cloud, dry rock and views pushed us on to a deserted summit.
Isla celebrating being the highest dog the UK
Ian’s silhouette as we start the descent.
And the view to the south as we headed down.
We had an interesting descent. Neither of us had brought head torches but we just about got away with it. We made it down and back round to the north face before things got dark, the path back down to the Leanachan forest was just runnable in the gloom (dark path, light rocks) but we had to walk most of the way through the forest as we couldn’t see – a lesson learnt.
4 hours for the round trip, pretty good going considering the slippy arete, dark descent and the 20 minutes snapping pictures on the summit.
–Matt
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