Ben Nevis

I've never climbed Scotland's highest mountain, despite spending years hillwalking in my youth, but our friends Maura and Jerry visiting from Ireland wanted to hike up it and despite a poor weather forecast (is there ant other for this notoriously fickle mountain?!) we set out Saturday to attempt an ascent.

The clouds were actually quite high as we set out around 11.30am with at least the hint of brightness where the sun was lurking in the southern sky. The first stretch is a sustained climb on a well formed path from about 35m (115ft) (according to my GPS) to around 640m (2100ft). Here we split from the main "tourist path" to skirt Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe then follow the contours around the huge buttress of Carn Dearg round to the Mountain Rescue Hut below Coire Leis.

View of the buttresses of Carn Dearg at lunch

The ridge over 500m (1700ft) above us was still visible as we ate lunch in preparation for the long, sustained and tough climb on a rocky slope to reach it... but of course as we climbed the cloud dropped and we were greeted near the top by driving rain and a violent buffeting wind. At least making the ridge cheered our spirits and we soon arrived at the summit cairn of Carn Dearg Meadhonach. From here the ridge gets narrow and rocky and with the wind periodically doing its best to blow us into the valley far below it was a hairy traverse over Carn Mor Dearg... though most of the time we couldn't see the drop (which Tracy claims helps her vertigo!?). A couple of times the clouds did blow off for a few minutes giving us glimpses of the summit and the view east to the Aonachs... but I didn't dare a picture in the wind and rain.

Finally the ridge widened and after another tough slog up maybe 200m (650ft) with the wind at my back the slope suddenly flattened onto a snow field and the GPS revealed I was only meters below the summit. Backtracking to pass on the information I met three bedraggled figures very glad of good news. We were soon on the summit, (which Maura, who'd been up twice in summer, didn't recognise covered in several feet of snow) at around 6pm and after a brief snack (and zero view) we followed the requisite bearings to safely regain the tourist path down, again suffering driving rain for maybe 10 minutes until we suddenly emerged from the cloud for great views of Lock Linnhe and Loch Eil.

Our descent was pretty quick, past a surprising number of people making a late bid for the summit (there is plenty of daylight but some were not well equipped and looked miserable) and we were back at the car around 8pm, soaked and tired but happy that we'd met the challenge. Time to drive back to our hostel in Fort Augustus and hit the pub!