On Sat 5th March Paul Thomas completed Stage One of his European Challenge with Team Warrior’s Damo and myself (Dean Grimshawe) in support.
I have really got to learn from my impulsiveness though as I finally agreed to help support Paul at around 3pm on the Friday as I was heading off for a late shift at work. As I finished my shift gone midnight I then rushed home to collect my kit and head off for Fort William. This wouldn’t have been so bad but after scaling Ben Nevis my next shift was starting at 7.30am Sunday morning! And yes, I did make it.
The long journey up was full of accounts from Paul’s past adventures and coupled with his unique way of telling the story I was laughing all the way. The journey was a great opportunity to learn more about Paul and indeed Damo as we shared the whole experience.
When we got to the bottom of Ben Nevis it was actually a really nice day. The sun was out and it was a decent temperature with no real wind. We wondered if it may just be clear at the peak? Could we be that lucky?
And going up was really good to start with. The initial incline was a definite challenge but we managed to make really good progress and I felt we had a strong pace. And the views were amazing. Here is us about half way up.
Not long after this point we started to hit the snow. At first the snow was patchy around the rocky path but as we got higher and higher there was not much but snow to be seen. Here is where the snow started.
Before long we were relying on the cairns to guide us to the top as everything was pure white out. In fact we had a guy on the way down trying to convince us to turn back and questioning us on whether we had the navigational skills to complete the trek to the summit. Normally this is good advice but as I was with 2 Ben Nevis Veterans who knew this mountain very well I knew we didn’t have a great deal to be concerned about. Besides we knew where we were and all 3 of us are more than competent with a map and compass so we thanked him for his concern and carried on moving. After all I wasn’t about to come this far just to get a photo of a bit of snow! I do think he thought we was nuts though and I’m pretty sure he muttered something under his breath as he walked on. Not to worry, on we pressed. Here are the cairns we followed.
Notice we are still in T-Shirts all the way to the top. The snow was difficult under foot so slowed us down a little bit. We didn’t have any pick axes or crampons like pretty much everyone else we bumped into had, but either way we still completed our journey to the summit in a respectable 3 hours and 30 mins.
After that getting down was quite simple though not quite conventional as we slid down in just 1 and a half hours using the bum slide for much of the descent.
And that was that memorable trip to Ben Nevis, until next month when we do it all again as part of the 3 Peak Challenge. I’ll close off with Paul Thomas signing off from Ben Nevis and marking the completion of Stage One of his European Challenge. Check out more about his European Challenge on his website here.
Team Warrior support Project 65. If you like what we do then please support us with a donation on our fundraising page here http://www.justgiving.com/teamwarrior
Leave a Comment
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
teamwarrior2011
Matt Wang
purerlife
tomcorbin83
