Tour Scotland, Ben Nevis

The highest mountain in Britain at 4,406 feet, Ben Nevis is located just over four miles to the south-east of Fort William, Inverness-shire. Topped by a twelve-foot
cairn, it does not rise to a majestic peak as one would perhaps expect, but rises in a gentle slope from the south-east. Only the northern faces present the
traditionally stern and craggy appearance to the world. These faces are acknowledged as the most extensive cliffs in Great Britain and as such they are much assaulted by climbers.

For many years, Ben Nevis took second place to Ben Macdhui for, although it had been climbed by 1771, it was not until one hundred years later, in 1870, that Ben Nevis was discovered to be in fact the higher of the two peaks. An observatory was erected on the summit in
1883 but by 1904 it had been abandoned through lack of funds. A record of its work and findings is to be found in W.T. Kilgours’ book Twenty Years on Ben Nevis. On one memorable night, in November, 1898, a wind force of 150
m.p.h. was recorded here and the next day the temperature inside the observatory was 27 degrees F.

A bridle track from Achintree in Glen Nevis gives the most simple means of access to the top but it is a winding
ascent covering in its meandering length some five miles in each direction so that it takes the best part of the day to accomplish the ascent and descent by this route. The track was originally constructed in order to facilitate the
building of the observatory. The name of the glen and the mountain is of an unknown derivation although one scholar, Alexander MacBain, thought that they were named after the nymph Neberta and that Nevis originally meant water, but generally the accepted explanation is that it derives from the Gaelic word nimph, meaning
malice. Ben Nevis is near enough to an off-shoot of the Gulf Stream for it to be influenced by it and both the mountain and the glen are frequently shrouded in cloud banks and persistent drizzle often blankets the slopes of the mountain itself.

Glen Nevis approaches the mountain obliquely, penetrating south-east from Claggan past the old hillside fortress of Dun Deardail and, once out of the mountain peak behind Carn Dearg (3,348 feet) it turns resolutely eastward at Achnabhach to encircle the hills. The
glen has a reputation for being a gloomy and forbidding place, beset by mist and rain.

Above the nethermost reaches of the road, to the south, rise the hills of the Mamore Forest which rapidly close in as one progresses, Sgurr a Mhaim (3,601 feet), Binnein Mor, (3,700 feet) and Stob Ban (3,274 feet) on the horseshoe-shaped ridge. The gorge is a shadow-
encompassed slit between Aonachbeag (4,060 feet), Aonach Mor (3,999 feet) and Meall A Bhuririch (2,762
feet) before dropping down to Loch Treig. In the reverse direction a tunnel carries the waters from this loch beneath the great mountains to feed an aluminium plant at Fort William, but up here the achievements of modern industry are forgotten in the wild and splendid isolation of Stob Coire Easain. (3,658 feet), ‘peak of the corrie of the
waterfall’.

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