Ben Nevis
A.K.A "Beinn Nibheis"
10.0 Miles - 4,600' - 5 hr 17 min
Saturday 20-April-2024

After today when someone asks me if I've hiked the highest peak in the British Isles, I can state that I've simply "Ben There, Done That."

Or in metric...

*All as measured by my Coros Apex 2 Pro

Introduction
Well I haven't been really hiking in a while.
Aside from some "Denver Area" hikes that I don't really think count my last "real" peak was over a year ago. So I guess it was a bit of a surprise to me that the next decent summit I would get happened to be very far away from the Centennial State. One who's summit happens to be lower in elevation than Denver but is nevertheless significant as being the highest peak in the British Isles.

Ben Nevis; the remnants of an ancient volcano that towers over nearby Fort William, where the Scottish Highlands meet the sea.
4,413' / 1,345m of elevation may not seem like much but given that "The Ben" is at a much higher latitude relative to Colorado, and that most routes start basically at sea level, this is not a mountain to take lightly, particularly in winter or shoulder season.

I happened to be on a work trip to Scotland that would give me this free weekend in-between time in Glasgow and then Aberdeen. I decided to give The Ben a go, and even packed much of my regular Colorado hiking gear prior to my flight. There is plenty of beta on the mountain out there; even two previous Trip Reports on this site: 24-Aug-2008, 23-May-2023. I decided to just not do anything fancy and take the Standard Route which apparently goes by many names including the Ben Path, the Mountain Path or the Tourist Route. The start of this route can be subtly different depending on where you decide to park, or if you decide to do something like stay at the Ben Nevis bunkhouse. I decided to simply start at the Ben Nevis Visitor Centre, which appears to be the most popular option.

Glen Nevis Visitor Centre and Start of Hike
Parking at the Ben Nevis Visitor Centre isn't free. There's an automated kiosk you must use and when I used it I mistakenly put in parking for a full 24 hr and £6, though if you specify less than 24 hr you'll save a few quid. I arrived before 6:00 AM and the place was nearly empty but there were already a few vehicles for hikers that already started or were about to start. I should also mention the Visitor Centre, at least as of the time of this writing, is "temporarily closed" thanks to staffing shortages so I can't speak to what services or amenities they supply (it looks like the toilets were still accessible though).

The hike from here is pretty straightforward. Take the bridge from the visitor centre across Glen Nevis, then follow the trail along the edge of a sheep field to the "official" trail that comes out of the Ben Nevis Inn. From here on you're steadily gaining elevation, heading southeast-ish hugging the western flank of Meall an t-Suidhe, a smaller peak north of Ben Nevis.

Eventually the route steepens a bit and turns more eastward around 1,400' / 430m, heading towards the saddle between Meall an t-Suidhe and Ben Nevis.

Saddle, Talus, Snow, and Summit
The saddle flattens out a bit to give you a bit of a reprieve, and there happens to be a lake sitting up here... or I'm sorry, not a lake, "Lochan Meall An T-suidhe," which gives some nice views.
Unfortunately though you're not quite halfway yet. You're close... but you have to then start heading southward on some switchbacks up The Ben from the saddle for a couple hundred feet to actually reach the halfway point.

From then on it's much of the same. Long switchbacks up a talusy class 1 trail.
About 1000' / 300m the trail starts to get snowy, and given the popularity of the trail this snow is pretty packed down. I put on microspikes here and was very thankful that I did so. Not to say you couldn't summit without them, in fact the vast majority of the people on the mountain that day didn't appear to have any, but the final push to summit in particular seemed troublesome for those who didn't have traction.

The switchbacks end around 3,900' / 1,200m and then you pretty much head straight south towards the summit. You have a minor false summit or two while making this final push and there's two straight steep bits where traction was definitely helpful.
Eventually it starts to flatten out and then you're finally greeted with the view of a summit marker and the remains of a long abandoned meteorological observatory.

I'm very thankful for how the weather turned out on this hike. The relatively clear skies are very much atypical for Ben Nevis, especially in "Early Season" as this hike would be classified in April. At summit temps were about 28° F / -2° C or about 18° F / -8° C with wind chill.

The numerous and rather large cairns that start to appear in that final push are indicative of the thick fog that often plagues the summit, fog that can be especially hazardous for navigation. Indeed, it doesn't take much of an internet search to pick up stories of hikers, often ill prepared hikers, getting completely lost at summit who then, in the worst of cases, can even end up descending one of the mountain's steep gullies by mistake.

Descent and Conclusion
After a short spell on the summit the descent began, which again was very much helped by my use of traction. I came across more than a few people on the descent who were certainly struggling or slipping/falling without it.

It then became apparent how popular this peak happened to be. Starting around 6:00 AM there weren't too many people joining my ascent, but on my way down the trail was as crowded as Quandary Peak's standard route on a summer weekend. And also, much like Quandary in summer, it was worrying seeing the number of hikers ascending wearing nothing but tennis shoes and carrying nothing but a water bottle.
I guess there's a reason they call this the "Tourist Route."

Other than that though the descent was straightforward. My legs were certainly tired given my recent dry spell of "real" hiking but I nevertheless made it back to my car without issue.

Overall a really good day. A tiring one, but a good one.
If I were to do it again though I'd definitely choose one of the non-standard routes if able to do so. The CMD Arete route in particular was recommended to me by a friend (and is covered in one of the trip reports mentioned above) but I wanted to avoid something that technical; especially since I was solo, and especially since it's early season.


Anyway after packing everything up at the car all that was left for me to do was head into town and grab a pint to celebrate.

*note the GPX file comes from Gaia GPS on my phone, since Coros apparently formats .gpx files in a way that isn't accepted here (?). So there will be subtle differences.