Its 4:57am and I'm awoken to the sound of Leon's (my Mums dog) claws brushing against the hard laminate flooring in the sitting room. I slept on the couch the night before as not too make too much noise when myself and Josh get ready to leave the house and head for Fort William the next morning. I give Josh's door a tap and tell him the kettle is boiling and remind him that we need to leave the house at 5:45 to walk to the train station in order to catch the 6:29am train from Helensburgh Upper to Fort William. After a quick shower, a cup of tea and double check of the rucksacks we left the house and headed for the train station.
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| An early view from the train... |
By 6:30am we are sitting on board the train shoveling down cereal bars and talking about the day ahead. The West Highland line is considered to be the most scenic railway line in Britain and was voted the top railway journey in the world in 2009 and 2010. The line passes the mountains of the Arrochar Alps, along the banks of Loch Lomond, the Tyndrum and Crainlarich hills, Rannoch Moor, Corrour (highest mainline railway station in the UK) and the Glenfinnan viaduct before it arrives in Mallaig.
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| Josh above Lochan Meall an t Suidhe... |
After 3 and a half hours the train rolls in to Fort William and myself and Josh depart and head for Achintree house to start our days walk. It is 24 degrees plus and we start the long trudge up the mountain track at the foot of Ben Nevis. Heat, sweat and thirst we finally arrive at the fork in the path above Lochan Meall an t Suidhe. Josh, who by now is already feeling the strain, contemplates a change in decision and is tempted by the 'tourist route' which zig zags up a well constructed foot path to the summit of the Ben. After a minute or so of discussing our options Josh picks up a stone and scratches one side of it to make it appear white. 'Orange side up we do the tourist route, white side up we do the arete' Josh says. He flips the stone and all we see is a white pebble staring back at us from the palm of Josh's hand. Thank god. We avoid the dull trudge up the 'tourist route' and start contouring around the North face of Ben Nevis and arrive at the CIC hut before we grab a quick bite to eat.
Whilst at the CIC hut we fill our water bottles up, again, and take a bearing due East towards the summit of Carn Mor Dearg. It takes us over an hour to skirt our way up the steep boulder and scree strewn slope before we finally arrive at the summit and claim my 8th Munro and Josh's 1st. A hand shake and a handful of toffee eclairs later we start to make our way along the incredible knife edge arete of Carn Mor Dearg towards the summit of Ben Nevis.
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Josh arriving at the summit of Carn Mor Dearg with the North face of Ben Nevis on the right and the Carn Mor Dearg Arete on the left...
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| Josh making snowballs in July... |
Josh leads off and we make good progress along the ridge admiring the views of all the surrounding mountains in the sunshine and excellent visibility. We finally reach the and of the ridge when we come across a large patch of snow and fill our empty water bottles up once again. After a quick re-hydration break we troop on up the boulder field and arrive at the highest point in Britain, the summit of Ben Nevis. Another handshake as I tick off my 9th Munro and Josh ticks off his 2nd. The views in all directions are incredible due to the excellent visibility.
Unfortunately our achievement is short lived as we are now racing against time in order to catch the last train from Fort William back to Helensburgh Upper! We quickly descend the 'tourist path' and wind our way down the knee jarring zig zags and rush back to Fort William. We manage to make the last train with 10 minutes to spare. The train slowly rolls out of the station at 7:50pm and we finally arrive back home at 11:40pm just as mum is dishing out some home made soup.
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| Mapped image of the days route... |
So all in all an excellent mountain day with the wee brother and another entry for the ML logbook.
