Some time ago (Christmas 2006 I believe), I wrote a short story for a tiny little website I built. That website is long gone, but I have just found all the old web pages in a dark corner of my backup drive so for the simple sake of not letting these words die too, I’m going post them on here. Obviously it’s not about sailing, but that why it’s in the other adventures section. I hope the writing of the 23 year old me is as entertaining as the 27 year old me. I post it entirely unedited.

Yogi’s nob is long and thick. Cucum cucum. Yogi’s nob is long and thick, he’s a cucumbear!
Our enthused voices buckled the mini bus roof at 2AM, the poor driver didn’t stand a chance against 12 pissed party goers in their 20’s returning from the works do to a B&B a few miles away from the recently relieved venue.
Me and Rob hatched the plan a couple of weeks previous, I can’t remember exactly when but we’d been camping a lot in the recent months and probably after a dose of Ray Mears decided we were going to spend a night in a snow hole. We’re both software "engineers" for an internet marketing company, and the run up to Christmas tends to be quite busy on the old marketing front, so the chance of both of us having holiday at the same time was pretty slim, but as luck would have it we both had loads of untaken holiday which the boss decided we needed to use up (otherwise I’d end up with 40 days holiday in 2007). The works Christmas jolly was planned for the Monday before Christmas, so we both booked the rest of that week off, and that’s where we placed our carefully laid plan to conquer and temporarily inhabit Scotland’s highest mountain.

The plan was simple enough: drive from Preston to Telford on the Monday, sit in a company meeting all day, hit the evening event avoiding excessive alcohol consumption, get to bed early and set off for Fort William at 7:30 Tuesday morning.

"Yogi wears a condom, carebear! Carebear!". We didn’t quite manage to totally abstain from the alcohol, in fact, we were both totally pissed. Rob got back to the B&B and immediately hit the sack, where as I followed the party into someone else’s room and had a few more glasses of bubbly, before finally making it to bed at around 4:00AM.

I awoke at 7:30 to a blurred view of my room mates still fast asleep, briefly thought about a shower before dismissing it’s icy trickle as a bad idea, got dressed and headed down to meet Rob. I was far too intoxicated to drive so I handed him the keys and he took the first shift in the drivers seat. We stopped at Carlisle by which time I was sober, refuelled, and swapped seats. We got to Fort Bill at 4:30 where we stocked up on some forgotten supplies and a map at Nevis Sport, then headed back down the road to Kinlochleven, where we had booked a cabin at the McDonald hotel. If you’re planning on a stint up there then I can’t recommend a better base from which to launch your adventure.

The cabins are pretty basic, consisting of four bunks and a heater, but they’re clean and comfy and at only £7.50 per person per night, about as good value for money as you’re going to get anywhere. They also do seriously tasty food (I had swordfish steak on one visit).

We booked in, got our cabin keys and emptied the contents of our rucksacks onto the bunks for a final kit check. Check complete, with nothing major left behind, we headed to the restaurant for tea (dinner to non northerners) and to watch the Liverpool/Arsenal match, which we discovered had been postponed due to fog. I’m not really a footie fan, but Rob, as a devout Liverpool supporter, appeared quite pale at the news of the abandoned game. We supped our one and only pint and headed off to bed at about 8:00PM.

We awoke early Wednesday morning after a cracking nights sleep, stuffed our sleeping bags into their sacks, changed into more mountain friendly attire, and headed back to the restaurant for some breaky. Stuffed with full English, toast, coffee and orange juice, I handed our cabin keys back and we jumped in the car.
30 minutes later we were in the Ben Nevis north face car park, donned our boots and did a final gear check, whilst having a quick chat with another group doing the same next to us. They planned on heading up to the CIC that day, camping near by, and climbing the next. We on the other hand, planned on topping out that day, which is perfectly doable, although hard work if you’re not in top condition – like Rob and me. After a quick look at the avalanche report on the way out of the car park, we began the walk-in, taking the path through the woods. There’s actually a more direct way, via the fire breaks, but it’s steep and hard work, and with all that kit on our back and bacon in our bellies, I didn’t bother mentioning it to Rob, just in case he actually wanted to go that way.

It wasn’t long before we’d warmed up and got into the swing of things, and before we knew it we were out of the trees and headed up the path to the CIC proper. It’s a nice walk in with a great view of the cloud clad north face ever increasing in size as you get closer to it’s base.
We must have really had some pace going because we never caught sight of the other group, even after a longish stop for Rob to tend to sore feet. We eventually arrived at the CIC hut, where a couple of chaps were busy doing something with what looked like a TV antenna. I was busy looking for the gully we wanted…

I’d been up the Ben a few times before and Rob hadn’t been to Scotland since he was a toddler, so I took charge in route finding, although even at this late stage I still wasn’t certain which way we were going to go up. My excuse was because we needed to ‘play it by ear’ with the snow conditions, but in reality it was because I couldn’t remember which way up was. Rob’s mountaineering experience was pretty limited, so it had to be something dead easy, not requiring a rope – because I’d not brought one. I was veering towards gully 4, but at the last minute spotted another route which I’d done before so headed back past the CIC, across the stream and straight up the hill towards a gully. The name of the route completely escapes me, but I shall endeavour to find out before I get to the end of this little write up. Going back and editing seems like cheating to me

At the bottom of the currently nameless gully, we paused to get out the crampons. Even by now the ground was pretty steep so I hacked a little ledge in the snow with the adze and sat down to strap on my spiky foot clobber.
Now equipped for the gully proper, refreshed from a quick gulp of water and gob full of brazil nuts, we began making our way into and up the gully.

It was initially fairly steep but pretty easy going, making foot holes in the reasonably frozen snow we plodded onto a narrowing where a chunk of rock restricts your world to 4-5ft in width and gets slightly steeper. It was here that the snow suddenly became absolutely shite for climbing up. Every foothold I tried to place dissolved under my mammoth 9.5 stone. I turned around to see Rob 15m behind and decided to stick my axe into something that looked fairly sold – frozen turf – and wait for him to catch up.
Once he was within reach I gave it another go, and once again all my footsteps fell away under me. Now, I don’t scare easily, but I have a this thing about avalanches, I don’t like them, and this shitty snow unnerved me. I turned to Rob to voice my concerns and rather ashamedly suggested we perhaps consider going down. We stood in silence for about 30 seconds before I finally thought ‘fuck it’. I slammed my axe in deep and pulled myself up the gully by a couple of feet, and kept doing it until I was near the top of the constriction. I don’t like being beaten so was glad I had bullied my way out of this one.
Rob, literally, followed in my footsteps and we began to make our way straight up the gully. After about 50m I stopped, tilted my head back and stared at the cornice above. It wasn’t huge, but it was steep immediately underneath and since we had no rope or protection, I was again a bit concerned about continuing, so after a brief chat, we backtracked, intending to traverse the gully and climb the ridge, a route which I’d done before. Rob, who’s sack was considerably heavier than mine was not impressed at the wasted effort spent ascending the gully direct and I recall him having a bit of a moan.

To get to the ridge you need to traverse a steep slope for somewhere between 100 and 200 meters. I thoughtfully let Rob know that it looks like prime avalanche ground and took the lead while he, even more thoughtfully, waited by a rock to see if I made it across.

Both safely on the ridge side of the traverse, we began to climb. Well, I say climb, it’s more like a hike up Jacks Rake. By this time we had about an hour or so of sun left and quite a bit of ridge to make our way up. Rob, although a gym addict and in theory considerably fitter than me, is quite a bit heavier and was also carrying a heavier rucksack, so by this point he was becoming seriously tired and his legs were starting to cramp up – not the best way to be when some parts of the ridge are a few feet wide with hundreds of feet straight down on each side. In all though it’s an easy route, but there are some reasonably exposed bits. Probably about 3 or 4 short little stints that, if they were longer might have just about achieved a diff grade rock climb.

I can’t remember the exact time we got to the top but the light was starting to ebb away. I took a few snaps with the camera, but due to poor light, a crap camera, and no tripod, they came out a bit shaky.
We were above an inversion so spent a little time taking in the fantastic scenery, with the sun ending its day dipping into the Irish sea, above a carpet of cloud… ahh, if I was a poet I might have been drawn to words more inspired than, "fucking hell its cold, let’s get this snow hole dug". But I’m not, so wasn’t.

We made our way down towards the tourist path up Ben Nevis and looked for a suitable place to dig our ice palace. It was early in season, so the snow wasn’t as deep as we’d hoped, although we worked this into the equation when selecting our gear for the trip so had a backup plan up our sleeves.
After 15 minutes of real estate hunting when found a little snow field, in a gentle slope and decided it was about as good as it’d get so downed gear and got out the snow shovel. We started digging the snow hole, but the snow had a hard ice layer just under the surface so we had to smash it with the axes to get anywhere. After 30 minutes of digging and get hardly anywhere I was starting to become seriously cold, and was urging Rob to unleash the backup plan – we’d brought along the outer of his Hilleberge.

It’s easy to write how cold I was now I’m sat here in my mate’s house, drinking a Fosters, listening to Kasabian with the fire roaring, but I was SERIOUSLY cold back then. All I could think about doing was lying down to have a sleep, and was pleading with Rob to just make do with the trench we’d dug and put the tent up over the top so I could get in my bag and warm up. He, in no uncertain terms refused because the trench wasn’t big enough to fit the tent in proper, so would have left it vulnerable to the wind, which was by now picking up considerably. I continued to try and help out, but I was being slow and clumsy, and by the time we actually had the trench big enough for the tent I was absolutely wasted. We got the outer pitched and I climbed inside, unrolled my mat, pulled my sleeping bag out of its stuff sack and climbed in. I was hungry and in dire need and a warm brew, but was too tired to make one. I lay half asleep, still very cold.
Rob got in the tent and I mustered the energy to get out every spare item of clothing I had and put it all on. I know this must sound really melodramatic, but it’s how it was. I was cold. I remember having a quick chat with Rob about the ever increasing wind, and then he said he was just nipping outside… I remember thinking something about captain Oates, then fell asleep.

I don’t know how long I was asleep for, probably about an hour, but when I awoke, piss wet through with sweat, Rob was farting about outside. Turns out he’d got so concerened about the wind he’d gone and built a snow wall around the tent out of the wind slab. It was a good job he did, we later found out that the wind hit 70mph that night.

I was feeling a little better after my nap, and managed to make a brew and eat some tuna, but due to the fact I was now wet with sweat, had little to no chance of warming up again for the rest of the night. We both eventually fell asleep and woke to the same windy conditions, but now we were in a total whiteout.

I admired Rob’s handy work with the snow wall, which was very impressive – it looked like a proper dry stone wall made out of white rock. We then packed up the tent and began the walk down.
A few hours later we got the the pub at the bottom, realised we’d left our wallets in the car and stared at the beer pumps with a face not dissimilar to that of my mums dog watching her carve the Sunday roast. Rob suddenly burst into action, unzipping pockets at random until he pulled out 6 quid in coins. "two pints of McEwans please". We rang a taxi to take us back to the north face carpark and drank our beers.

Ahh, a proper Christmas adventure!