Hello there folks, another story for you today, if you would like to hear this as read by my good self then please have a look on the audio page for the direct audio file, or better still click here: Original Short Stories to go directly to the podcast series in iTunes!

Here we go then:

Ben Nevis

By Daniel .M. Brown

A dairy entry was found recently as the winter snows melted away revealing a little bit more of the Ben Nevis mountaintop to the late summers warmth. Scribbled out on a few ragged pieces of paper and some cardboard packaging it was clear to all who saw it that it was no more than two or three years old at the most. This is the story that the writer has to pass on.

Well what a day it has been, we have got ourselves up to the top of good old Ben Nevis. When I say we, I refer to myself (obviously) and my dear friend Stan. Both of us being the young, fit and healthy chaps we are, or at least like to think we are, managed a very speedy ascent all things considered.

Allow me to tell you are our tale. Things nearly failed to get off the ground altogether  in the morning, when our car, for a few scary moments, refused to start. We had camped at a wonderful place called Ardnamurchan the night before. What a colourful Scottish name for a very well charactered little place. The first thing to note about this place is that it is the most westerly point on the British mainland, which means that when you look across the atlantic ocean at the setting sun, you can do so knowing that you are the last people on the mainland to see to see the sun that day.

Then of course there is the lighthouse. Tall and proud keeping watch on the miscellany of islands that fill up a good chunk of the horizon. It is automated now of course, but it can easily be imagined that there have been many happy hours spent gazing out of it into the purple sky as the sun has moved along to shine upon America.

Dear me, I am getting distracted, suffice to say it is a lovely place and it was with the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks below that we fell asleep in our tents. As I mentioned earlier, on packing up this morning we found the car unwilling to start. We had taken a risk and parked it on somewhat of a precarious sideways angle just off the road leading to the lighthouse. After a few attempts and some actual physical rocking of the car she sprang back to life and off we set on our fifty mile trip to Fort William, where we would start the attack on Ben Nevis.

The journey up was ok, although as we got closer to our destination it became clearer and clearer to us that the sky was going to be anything but clear when we arrived, and that we would be making the ascent in cloud at the very least. By the time we had driven on to the little ferry at Ardgour to take us across the Corran Narrows to lochaber it was certain that we would see a good few spots of rain. So it was that we arrived and parked the car in the main carpark a few minutes out of Fort William in Glen Nevis. Obviously my dear friend could not contain himself and had to make a remark about Glen and Ben Nevis being a lovely couple. Much to my dismay.

It was one-thirty in the afternoon when we set out to climb the peak, soon we would be on the the highest point anywhere on the British Isles. That was a great motivational boost considering we were starting off from a mere four meters above sea level and heading up to a massive one-thousand three-hundred and forty-four meters.

There is a nice well defined path up the side for what I would estimate to be maybe as much as three quarters of the way, it is well paved with large stones and even for a beautiful few moments evens out to a flat stretch of compacted earth that could be a lovely country path on a much less taxing circuit, then up again it climbs, for the top portion turning into a steeper rockier road to final destiny, at some points disappearing under the almost unbelievable snow.

We had chosen this day to do Ben Nevis as it was a nice quiet weekday, no school holidays, no special events, just a lovely quiet early spring day. There were obviously a few people around, on the early part of the ascent we met a few people who had turned back claiming that the weather was getting pretty nasty up there. Lightweights! We couldn’t believe that there were people who would come this far and then turn back! Seeing this group of weak hearted folks just made us even more determined to press on! Almost a little bit to determined though as in the excitement of the moment we picked up the pace and started to let our concentration drift as we talked about what it might be like up there, I, in my great wisdom started peering into the cloud that went round the track ahead. Maybe two thirds of the way up the route disappeared and as I tried to figure out just where we were heading I put my foot right into a stone lined drainage gully, it was cut into the path about a foot lower than the walkway. Needless to say I tumbled over in a spectacular manner, arms flailing and words of an ungentlemanly nature escaping my mouth!

Ouch, my shin was the worst off, and even as I write this now it is giving me a less than comfortable sitting experience. An awkward scrape down a good length of the front of the shin, one of those types of cut that isn’t bad or deep, just bleeds a lot and is generally uncomfortable. No big deal though, a quick dab with a damp tissue and on we went, it was rather annoying that I had this little niggle from so far down though, we were less than halfway up at this point so I had plenty of time to get used to the little twitch of pain.

On we went, up, up and up. Into the cloud, a fascinating mist, I have never seen such thick mist in my life, you could see it in the small space simply between your eyes and the ground below your feet. This made the whole mountaintop rather damp as you can imagine, then when we hitting the top three-hundred meters the skies opened and down came the rain. Until this moment we had been thinking of all those quitters who had turned back in fear of the weather, now however it was coats on, hats on and march on, or at least slowly move against the hammering raindrops that seemed to gain the weight of a good sized hail of pebbles. A few minutes after the rain began we left the sheltered mountainside and were greeted by strong winds, and just like the mist, this was a kind of weather condition I had never experienced in my life.

My hat was the first victim of the wind, a humorous bobble hat, gone in a flash, maybe it is still somewhere on the path, who knows. Only the wind can know where it dropped it off. With the first gust we both looked at each other, we knew this was some serious business. After the grinning about my lost hat and the general aclimitisation to the strong wind we continued. A much slower pace now as the wind was right in our faces. As we got higher and higher and the incline less and less, the wind had a much greater license to attack us.

The first ground snow that we found in our path was a sure sign that we were only minutes away from our target, the rain had eased off, but we found ourselves very chilly from the still violent wind whipping at us every step of the way, the snow was a pleasant sight and even in the poor visibility it was clear that this place was something special. Just like from a film, dark brown rocky drops and deep and heavy patches of snow everywhere you looked. On we went and then we saw it... The raised circular platform of slate and rocks that marked the top of Ben Nevis.

Stan now ran ahead of me, desperate to be the first to reach the top, in the spirit of the friendly challenge I ran for my life hoping to beat him to the narrow steps up the side of the low platform. Neck and neck we reached them and I relented and let him go first, “damn it!” I thought as he scampered up them. But before I could congratulate him on his victory, or indeed before he got to the top he fell back onto me. Down to the snow we tumbled and I wandered what had stopped him so promptly. Almost before I had gathered my wits again Stan had jumped up and rushed round the back of the raised cylinder, he went out of sight so I picked myself up and followed him. Round the back I found him crouched with blood covered hands looking up at me as below him the lay a perfectly still body.

Stan looked at me and said in a weak voice “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t see him, did you see him? Straight into him I went, he fell off. He wasn’t looking or he would have got out of the way, I didn’t see him, you didn’t either did you?”

“No” was my stammering reply as I realised what had happened.

I leaned down to take a look at the body. A man, maybe as old as his fifties, grey hair through and through at least. He was dressed in the usual waterproofs and brightly coloured clothes of a casual walker type and there was nothing really distinguishing about him to keep him in the memory any longer than anyone else. Except that all around him the snow was turning red, and fast. I rolled him over as Stan stood back in horror, still muttering about not seeing him. Directly under the mans head was one of the many jaggy stones that were exposed from the snow all over the mountaintop. It was clear what had happened and his head must have collided with it with a pretty hefty force, being knocked off your feet and falling straight back about two meters is not ideal in any situation, but this was horrific. I could not bare to look at the damage to the back of the poor blighters head for more than a second. It was awful, clearly an injury that was not going to offer anything but death to the victim.

So there we are, We have reached the summit of Ben Nevis.

What are we going to do now?

The End.

Thanks for reading/listening everybody,

take care of yourself and have fun,

dan.