This report for Castle Ridge on Ben Nevis is purely for interest, it shouldn’t be taken as a guide. For the first route of the season Simon (from Wild Mountain Guides) and I wanted something relatively easy, especially in the conditions which are marginal. We opted to go for a walk with our axes and gear and an open mind as we weren’t too sure what we’d get. We met early in the north face car park, cycled/pushed bikes to the top park where we stashed them and carried on to the North face. As we walked in we got a fantastic sunrise and quickly picked out Castle ridge as a sensible objective.
We had toyed with Tower ridge but felt that with the incredibly short December days, the potentially unconsolidated snow and our relative winter rustiness, Castle was to be a better option. We were glad with our decision as we geared up near the base of Castle gully, both feeling the early winter cob webs getting firmly blown away by the approach with winter ruck sacks.
Once on the route, we enjoyed soloing up the easy angled slabs and a fair bit of the main ridge. The snow was pretty unhelpful but all the turf we came across was well frozen and took axes well.
We reached the base of the crux and built a belay, just in the corner before stepping round onto the slab. Castle Ridges crux is fairly intimidating for the uninitiated, it takes a traverse and then climbs a relatively steep chimney crack with great exposure for about 5m. This was overcome with a little bit of grunting and the occasional “thought this was grade III”, again our rustiness and early season conditions reminding us caution is a good friend early in the season!
We carried on up the ridge and pitched one final short chimney section and continuing to top out, where Castle Ridge meets the Western flanks of Ben Nevis. There was hardly a breath of wind as we sorted our rucksacks and packed ropes and gear away and we were greeted with an amazing sunset as we set off down the snow covered scree.
We descended into the coming dark, again being reminded just how short days are at the minute, but met a guy pitching his tent for the night near the half way lochan, a lovely spot. We had decided to go straight down the scree slopes and join the faint climbers path which comes out of the half way lochan, as opposed to traversing all the way across to join the main tourist track and in the conditions felt it was the best decision. It’s not ground you can “switch off” on, the scree is still loose and not properly snow covered, giving that awkward feeling that crampons are both hindering and helping. Are torches were firmly on by the time we got to the bikes and they proved the effort was worth pushing them to the top in the morning, taking less than 10 minutes to get back to the car park. It was then a 20 minute cycle for me to get back home in time for tea.
A great day and great to be out in winter again.
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