Ben Nevis

19:58

We are back down safely!

What a journey, hard work but enjoyable on the way up.  Showers on the way up until we got to 3200 ft and very windy along Five Finger Gully. Then it was time for a hail storm!  At about 3900 ft there was plenty of snow underfoot, stray off course by more than 10ft and the snow was knee deep.  We were still experiencing the hail with the wind pushing it horizontally and visibility down to about 20 ft. Our drinks had frozen and, if you stopped climbing for more than a few seconds, you really felt the cold.  At 4402 ft, we stopped for a picture at the war memorial and decided to get going with the descent. The weather really closed in then and visibility was down to about 15 ft. We had to follow the cairns to enable us to keep on the path. The hail now felt like having gravel thrown in your face, our drinks and chocolate bars had frozen.  Once we had descended about 100 ft conditions improved a little and, before long, we were off of the snow and back onto the rocks and gravel. We made our way down through scattered showers and, as we were on the Zig Zags, we were rewarded with a magnificent rainbow.  We arrived back at the minibus at 19:58 where Elaine, Robin and Carlton had a nice hot cup of tea waiting for us.  We are now back in the bus and on our way to Scafell Pike with an ETA of 02:00. Unfortunately, that means we will start our climb of Scafell in the dark but we are all agreed it was better to air on the side of safety and start Ben Nevis earlier than planned.

We were delighted to find out that another £80 had been donated to the fund while we were on the mountain!