Ben Nevis + 7 others

Ages ago my brother Mark suggested we try a Tranter round - a 24 hour circuit of the 17 Munros around Glen Nevis -we made a date in our dairies. A month before we were due to do it we decided we didn't stand a chance, we had done no training at all so we (Mark) decided we'd do half of it - Ben Nevis, down the CMD arete, over to the Aonachs and then on to the Grey Corries.

We set off nice and early with the charity trekkers up the tourist track, zig follows zag follows zig....but we made good time and reached the summit in 1hr 45mins. Unfortunately we had white out conditions and spent 20 minutes trying to find the way down to the CMD arete.

Eventually we found the absail post in blizzard condtions and headed across the arete.



All was going well until we had to descend from the CMD down to the bealach, down a knife edge snow ridge and then completely missed the path and struggled down steep grass and slabs. The ascent up to the Aonachs was much easier than it looked from the CMD, easily up to Aonach Mor then back down again to a complete white out on Aonach Beag.


After a long hard slog up to the first of the Grey Corries (who put that other hill in the middle?) the sun had decided to come out between bursts of horizontal hail. The down and flats between the summits on the ridge where flying by but any up and we slowed rapidly to a crawl.


20 miles, 10,000 foot of ascent and two packets of jelly babies - not bad for 9 hours work.


--Matt