After wading out the door today through the piles of cards I started up the Ben track with Nicolai, Andrea, Lauritz and Jennifer from Glasgow uni. With the temperature rising as we emerged out of the cloud inversion we made steady progress to the zig zags, where I was still in just a base layer and a gilet! With the sun starting to come round the corner we put crampons on to make our way further up the mountain where the wind increased and the temperature plummeted to its usual chill factor.
Legs were starting to hurt by the plateaux where we lost all visibility in the cloud but spirits were high whilst making our way over the last stretch to the summit in a good 4 hours.
Then started the strangest lunch I think I have seen on the summit: a tub of pre-pealed oranges (good forward thinking there), cheese sandwiches, sausage, chocolate and Turkeys’ finest ‘Hot and Spicy’ liquorice spirit, all mixed together I’m not sure what the dominant flavour would be. You can take the student out of Glasgow…….
With a quick turn around we then descended, back into the good views out west and south down Loch Linnhe. A great day to be on the hills.
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Nicolai, Andrea, Lauritz, Jennifer on the summit
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