We'd decided quite early on that while the Big Easy Mountain Route Club was to be a very exclusive mountaineering club it would never be closed to guest members. The basic entry requirement of being able to eat your fair share of an all day veggie breakfast in a tin means that it is open to most (we'd have to work something out if a vegan wants to come out with us now that the egg nugget actually has some egg in it but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it).
Helena had decided that she wanted to climb Ben Nevis shortly after her birthday but lacking in transport she thought it would be easier if she dragged some mates along. From what I gather Ben and Malc said that they would go but they didn't want to walk up it so we'd have to climb up Tower Ridge. Tower Ridge is the longest rock climb in the UK. Helena has had limited climbing experience (probably about 10 days out in her life (though one was quite a long day on Idwall Slabs.)
They don’t come much bigger and easier than this.
Climbing with Hel was fun although I think I annoyed her a bit on the way there by referring to her as our guest climber when to be fair the whole thing was her idea.
We started the day in a supermarket car park in Fort William to escape the midges which had laid siege to us the night before. Only Malc didn’t seem too bothered by them, then again I’ve ever seen him look too bothered by anything.
Some weeks earlier me and Mark had talked about soloing it, most of it is more of a scramble than a climb after all. I was quite set on this idea but like the others I’d taken a harness and we had a rope and rack. It would have been stupid not to really, especially as Hel hadn’t really climbed much before, and nothing big. In the weeks and days leading up to the trip Malc had been noncommittal when I talked about soloing it, tending to make hopeful sounding comments about taking something nice along with us for breakfast whenever I mentioned it. Andy had been making hopeful comments about walking up instead of climbing for quite a while. At this stage he was still far from fully mended after Wall of Mist, he seemed to be finding a lot of excuses not to come out on the crags and I’d noticed some of his slings and krabs being used to hold up a washing line in his garden.
We missed out the Douglas boulder (this is the most technically difficult bit of the climb (graded at V Diff) as we were a bit worried about the length of time that it would take as we would definitely have to rope up and place gear properly especially as we had a relative novice with us. We scrambled up along side the boulder and were met by a lone climber in the Douglas Gap. He had been soloing round the valley and had got in a bit of trouble and had to leave his rucksack half way up a climb and was wondering if he could borrow our rope and some gear so that he could abseil down to retrieve it. Being safety conscious climbers and as we were climbing with a relative novice we had brought a rope and being helpful types we lent it to him. Unfortunately this meant that we now had to do the 'longest climb in the UK' without a rope. Our mystery climber had informed us that the bit directly ahead of us was the most technically difficult bit of the climb so if we could do that we'd be OK. We also had a large number of slings with us so I climbed up the tricky bit and lowered the chain of slings down for Hel to attach to and I could belay her up from there (pictured above). Hel managed this with no problem so we waved good bye to our most useful piece of safety equipment on the promise that he would follow us up the ridge to return the rope when he'd retrieved his rucksack.
.
I’d never really done anything in Scotland before and I was a bit surprised by the scale of it. The mountains went on forever. The approach was quire long and I made good use of the time by persuading Hel that the stiles over the deer fences were to stop the wolves from coming down of the mountains to hunt in the valleys. The climb went on for ever too, tower after tower after ridge emerged from the mist for what seemed like hours. ‘It’s a bit relentless’ Andy understated at one point after about 1000 feet. We missed off the bottom bit too because we thought it would take too long to do it roped up, no-one would solo it with me, and I was too scared/sensible to do it on my own
As you can see we had a fine day for it
Helena in a bit of a cavey bit. Just above this was the only other time that we felt that Hel should go on a sling as it was a bit steep
Our mystery climber caught us up just as we got to Tower gap (the second crux), That is him just after removing a sling.
Andy threw all dignity to the wind by using direct aid on the Tower Gap. The good name of the big easy mountain routes club has yet to entirely recover.
I can't remember why we had a toy donkey with us.
The descent
