UK09: Day 5 - Ben Nevis

[Note: Accompanying photo gallery for the whole Scotland experience here]

The next morning I awoke to a drizzle. After the last couple days where the general trend was clearing up into the morning, I decided to hang tight, since I only had 10 miles of hiking slated for the day. That happened to be up the tallest mountain in the UK (Ben Nevis, at 4300 feet), but still. Don't need all day for that. After a lazy morning, sometime around 10:30 the rain stopped and it looked like things were maybe clearing up. Or at least I was bored sitting around camp. So I set out.

The hike up was mostly dry, but the trail wasn't too interesting. Just up and up, and it was really well traveled. By that, I mean hiker highway. Oh well... I'll do anything once. It started raining towards the top. Hard. And cold. And windy. The last mile or so was above vegetation line and through a barren rock landscape. There was even a patch of snow to hike across, which I was mildly surprised at. The top was more or less flat, although with no vegetation there were views in the directions not blocked by clouds. Also present were the remains of an old observatory and a few monuments. After about 10 minutes of getting soaked hoping the rain would abate, I gave up because I was soaked to the skin and starting to lose body heat to the wind. I think the mountain was generating its own rain to some degree, because I could look out under the clouds and see that it was light and almost sunny out in the valleys below.

Climbing Ben Nevis. Town of Ft William below.

The summit of Ben Nevis is flat, but there are dramatic cliffs on the one side. (You can just barely see people next to the monuments at upper right for scale)

The trip down was.... miserable. Not to look for pity or anything, but I was tired, didn't want to stop to dig out food from my pack (so starving) and there was no shelter up there whatsoever. And the rain would let up for just a bit before coming back seemingly harder than before. You would think that given I was soaked to the skin it wouldn't be so bad, but the continual, cold drenching felt... spiteful. I am still definitely glad I did it, but let's just say I probably would have enjoyed it more had it been a little dryer. But hey... Rain is the reality of hiking in Scotland, and I had lucked out the previous two days.

It poured most of the way down, despite apparently being sunny right down there in Ft William.

I had been considering getting a bed (and a shower) at a hostel that night anyway, since I would be traveling by bus (and plane) back down the island the next day. But given my cold and drenched state, my mind was made up. Fortunately, there was a nice hostel right at the base of the mountain that was set up with a drying room among the other amenities. So 18GBP later, I had a nice, clean bed, a long, piping hot shower, and all my stuff was drying out nicely in the drying room. Much, much better than a cold, wet night. (It did continue to rain for most of the rest of the day).

Met some cool folks at the hostel, including my roommates who were from Poland, biking Scotland for a month. Sounds like fun! I actually went to bed quite early (partly out of boredom), and slept long and hard.