Just because we can we decided to have a staff meeting for icanfoster on the summit of Ben Nevis which is just up the road, a bit. This is why we drove through the night arriving at the north face car park at 2am, had a quick snack, loaded ourselves up with more snacks than was absolutely necessary and began a night navigation through the forest to the lower reached of the UKs biggest mountain.
The plan was to get to the summit via the CMD arete and by 6am we had reached the CIC hut at the base of the north face of the Ben.
This led to a bit of a discussion as to the best next step. Ideally we would have headed up the CMD summit 1179 but the weather and visibility was not improving and so
instead of picking a route through this
we headed off around the base of the Ben to pick up the zig zags to the summit.
As we climbed the weather gave us brief glimpses of the height gained
the only good point being that the promised torrential rain failed to materialise.
Soon we had reached the start of the zig zags and pressed onwards and upwards
and while it is the easier route its still very high
and seemingly endless
but eventually we made it to the
top!
Eric and Ernie cavorted around while we did some work, yes we did, and all too soon we were heading back the way we had came but this time smiling and telling the next groups of summiteers that it really wasn't that far to the top.
A bit of expert map reading and a river crossing cut off some 3km
and lo we were back in the car heading south with 208 miles no turns ahead which is about as far as you can travel in a straight line in the UK road network.
Lucky for us he wasn't driving. We got back to safety of the shire at 2.30 am Saturday. So if you have 36 hours or so to spare, go and do Ben Nevis.
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