Britain's highest mountain, 1,345 metres — and unlike Snowdon there's no train or road up it, so you walk every step to the top.
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Ben Nevis is the highest mountain in Britain, and the highest ground anywhere in the British Isles, at 1,345 metres — 4,413 feet — above Fort William and the sea loch beside it. The top is a broad, stony plateau rather than a sharp peak, with the ruins of an old weather observatory and an emergency shelter on it.
Most people go up by the Mountain Track, also known as the Pony Track or the Tourist Route. It is a walk rather than a climb — you will not need to scramble with your hands or use a rope — and on a clear summer day a reasonably fit person can get up and down. Do not let “walk” fool you, though: it is a long, hard day. The usual start is Glen Nevis, from the Ben Nevis Visitor Centre at Achintee just outside Fort William, and the path climbs in long zigzags to the plateau. Reckon on around 10 miles there and back, well over a thousand metres of ascent, and something like 7 to 9 hours.
There is no shortcut to the top. Ben Nevis has no train and no road up it, so unlike Snowdon you cover every metre on foot. You can at least reach the foot of the mountain without a car — Fort William has a railway station, and buses run out towards the glen from the town.
The real hazard is usually the weather, not the climbing. The summit is in cloud more often than not, and most accidents happen when people lose the path coming back across the plateau in poor visibility — several deep gullies drop straight off the edge, and walkers stray into them every year. Carry a map and compass and know how to use them; a phone is not enough up here.
Summer is the season for walkers. From about November to April snow and ice cover the mountain and the Mountain Track becomes serious winter mountaineering — an ice axe, crampons and the skills to use them, not something to wander up in trainers. Snow can sit in the summit gullies into the summer even when it is warm in the town below.
Ben Nevis also has another side. Its north face is a wall of cliffs, one of the great rock and winter climbing grounds in Britain — but that is a different sport from the walkers’ path, and you see none of it from the Mountain Track.
More at hill-bagging.co.uk
