Ben Nevis and the Carn Mor Dearg Arête

As an aside before I start, we were able to follow the tennis while on holiday. Andy Murray won Wimbledon. Apparently a mini storm erupted over the fact Alex Salmond proudly waved a Saltire flag at the end. A former member of the Tartan Army (the collective name given to the national football team support) I think he was simply showing his appreciation of a fellow Scot competing successfully at the highest level in his sport. However his critics have moved quickly to attack his actions as some cynical political gesture and I believe the comments to be absolutely infantile. If they have real grudges to bring to the fore fine, but have they nothing better to devote their time to? The Saltire flag is about a thousand years old, apparently the flag that has been in longest continuous use in the world. I see nothing wrong with his actions.

What brought all that to mind?

Today Caley and I have enjoyed a hundred blip day on Carn Mor Dearg (Karen More Jerrack means big red rocky hill) and Ben Nevis. The latter is of course the highest Munro but should I say the highest mountain in Scotland or the highest in the UK. What if one of those idle journalists reads my blip and gets all offended. It wasn't a day to dwell on such trivial nonsense and I didn't have a flag of any description in my rucksack.
Ben Nevis is a tremendous mountain. From the north it presents cliffs and outcrops that give a feeling of impregnability. They are popular year round with rock and ice climbers. Despite this, on the other side of the mountain, a very well engineered "tourist footpath" curls round the lower slope then rises in easy zig zags to the flat bouldery summit. Many visitors come to the area to climb the Ben and on a day like this it was very busy. The path is just a long slog and offers no feel for the profile of the hill. The CMD approach is a more strenuous and slightly technical mountain walk but it offers unsurpassed views of the great north face with its soaring ridges. It gets better. As you leave CMD the ridge narrows as it swings round toward Ben Nevis and the onward route could be a bit scary in windy conditions. The rock changes colour here too. CMD is red and the Ben is of grey andesite. The final pull up to the summit of the Ben is a good thousand feet and you have already climbed 4000 in reaching the top of CMD.
Because of the popular tourist path you are no longer a solitary walker as you reach the top and today dozens of tourists were sitting about having their lunch. Our return route was partly via the tourist path and we probably met another hundred folk ascending on this section. There is an appalling amount of litter too.
We left the tourist path at the half way loch and Caley enjoyed a refreshing swim before descending to the day's starting point at Torlundy.

I took so many shots I needed to put in my spare camera battery but there can only be one so this is looking along the CMD arête towards the towering east corner of the Ben.