2 weeks without snow is too long!

Before every particularly important hospital appointment, I try to get out into a wild place a day or two before. I find that it helps sort my head out, reminding me that life is good and that there is still a lot more to see and do in the world. However, doing White Magic the day before a Chemo meeting two years ago, made for an extremely surreal week. Even though I had to be in hospital in Chester first thing Friday, Thursday was no exception to this rule and I spent the day up on the Ben with some GUM Clubbers.

View off the summit cairn, can't believe how much snow there is already! Bring on winter

Typical day out on the Ben for Libby and I, we always seem to find ourselves tramping about up there in terrible conditions! With Jonnie completing the team we had planned on doing Minus 1 Direct; it was a pretty wet day but Minus 1 is a moist climb anyway, apparently. This didn’t happen, nor did plan B. (Route II) or plan C. (one of the big ridges). So, with much dithering we joined French newbie, Arthur, on the walk we had suggested for him, up CMD arête and back down Ledge Route.

As none of us could really be bothered carrying anything up any higher (bad training I know!) we left everything at the CIC and went for a wander up to the arête. Arthur was pretty concerned about our stuff getting nicked, but I guess this is the one advantage of Scotland over the Alps; there was no one about to do any stealing!

So I still haven’t been for a ‘run’, though we did bounce down quite a lot of the path. But I think this is the first time I have worn my Innov8 fell running shoes in about 2 and a half years so it’s a start at least! Though I don’t think I am total lost cause for the OMM as impressively we got from the CIC hut to Glasgow in just over 3 hours. This meant that I could get a few hours kip before my 4.30am train back home. Believe me, Alpine starts are even less fun when there isn’t any climbing involved in them!