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  There are few mountains in Scotland which have the same fatal attraction as Ben Nevis; possibly because it is the highest mountain in Britain. Everything, probably including the proverbial kitchen sink (certainly a piano), has been dragged to the whale-back summit in the name of charity. Platform heels and the ubiquitous carrier bag in lieu of a rucksack are often the artificial aids of the intrepid peak-bagger. Various forms of transport have been used to convey the adventurous to the top, one of the earliest being a motorcycle, but probably the best known vehicular ascent was that by Henry Alexander in a Model T Ford in 1911. He repeated the feat in 1928, driving the car from Edinburgh for the ascent!

  The whale analogy for Ben Nevis is not that far out, especially in winter when the Ben, viewed from the south, resembles Captain Ahab’s big white adversary. The Ben is not a friendly mountain and the interpretation of the name may come from a Gaelic compound word, Beinn-neamh-bhatais. The neamh refers to cloud or heaven and bhatais, the top of the head, a name describing a peak with its head in the clouds, not unlike the Maori name for Mount Cook, Aorangi, the Cloud-Piercer. Certainly, on a stunning spring day on the summit, one could imagine being transported to even loftier heights. However, another interpretation of the name is “venomous” or “malicious”, appropriate for a mountain buffeted by the full fury of Atlantic storms in whose track it lies.

  The first recorded ascent was in 1771 by one James Robertson, a botanist who was collecting specimens for Edinburgh University Museum. The poet John Keats gained the summit in 1888 and, diverting into the realms of meteorology, there wrote a sonnet on the all familiar scene:

  Read me a lesson, Muse, and speak it loud

  Upon the top of Nevis, blind in mist!

  I look into the Chasms and a Shroud

  Vapourous doth hide them; just so much I wist

  Mankind doth know of hell: I look o’erhead,

  And there is a sullen mist; even so much

  Mankind can tell of heaven . . .

  It is the north-east face of the Ben that attracts mountaineers and generations of them have trudged to the mighty cliffs through the boot-topping squelch of the Allt a’ Mhuillinn glen for over a century. These great cliffs are the most impressive in Britain but it’s in winter they come into their own. North-East Buttress and Tower Ridge are enormous flying buttresses which prop up the 1,000-foot high precipices of this lofty leviathan. There is also a host of smaller ridges and faces and a profusion of gullies in the wings. On its right flank is Carn Dearg which offers some of the best rock climbing in the country.

  Getting to know the Ben is like a protracted relationship. Eventually you become intimate with its gullies and buttresses which are as complex as a computer motherboard. In winter it can offer pristine white cover, persuading you into thinking that no human has ever stepped on it before. These winter gullies and faces were the birthplace of modern ice climbing and devotees come from all over the world to pay homage with the ascent of its classic routes. But the quick-change weather ensures that for many a given climb on your personal tick-off list is more often than not re-scheduled for next time round. One has to be patient to winter climb on this great north-east face; a straightforward route, especially in winter, can transform chameleon-like with a passing snow cloud.

  An early weather man, Clement Wragg, was a motive force behind the establishment of an observatory on the summit in 1883. Later there was even a summit hotel whose guest book prompted the now popular entry: “Missed the view, viewed the mist.” Wragg’s tenacity in daily walking and climbing the fourteen miles to the summit from Fort William, regardless of weather, earned him the title of Inclement Wragg.

  Few people, unless they dabble in particle physics, know that the idea of the cloud chamber was first conceived by Charles Wilson who spent two weeks in September 1894 working as a student at the summit Observatory. Later he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

  The Observatory was a relatively short-lived experiment which suffered several narrow escapes from the elements. In June 1895 a shocked occupant recorded: “a blinding flash of lightning illuminated the Observatory, followed instantly by a terrific crash. Bluish spurts of flame and a cloud of smoke burst from the telegraph instrument and the cook, who was sitting in the office at the time, was pitched on his back and rendered unconscious.” The cook survived – though slightly overdone – but the telegraph apparatus was wrecked, “melted beyond recognition”. During the operation of the Observatory the annual rainfall averaged 160.69 inches, with 1898 holding the record – twenty feet!

  Chucking away litter isn’t just a modern Scottish trait. They did it on Ben Nevis, using Gardyloo Gully as a skip. This elegant chute takes it name from an early Edinburgh custom of throwing the contents of chamber pots out of bedroom windows onto the street below with the accompanying call of Gardez l’eau! In its skip chute capacity Gardyloo Gully played a role in the final demise of Britain’s highest building. Two tough gentlemen, who will remain anonymous, spent several months, including their Army demobilisation leave at the end of the Second World War, stripping the Observatory roof of its lead. This they neatly rolled up like high density Swiss rolls and launched them down the hard spring snow of the gully. Then after weeks of back-breaking work carrying them to Fort William under cover of darkness, they borrowed a truck and drove to the yard of a heavy metal dealer in Glasgow. The postwar boom had inflated the price of lead, but ironically on that precise day the bottom fell out of the lead market – they barely recouped their expenses. There must be a moral here.

  The ascent of the great natural features of the Ben elicited the attention of the pioneers at the tail end of the nineteenth century. The brothers J.E. and B. Hopkinson succeeded in making the first ascent of the North-East Buttress in September 1882. Not to be outdone by the Hopkinsons, the indomitable Norman Collie, with Solly and Collier, two other redoubtable cragsmen, climbed Tower Ridge in the winter of 1894. Even today this snow and ice climb is considered a three star outing using modern gear.

  In the year 1861 William Henry Burroughes of the renowned billiard table makers, Burroughes & Watts of London, together with a party of seven, arrived by steamer at Fort William to scale Ben Nevis. They had hired an experienced local guide, Duncan McMillan, for at this time there was no proper track up the mountain. The guide seemed to have little control over the gentry and the fitter ones pressed ahead, keen to get to the top before dark. Henry Burroughes was however feeling tired by the time they had reached the 4,000-foot contour, about a quarter of a mile short of the summit. This was at a fountain called Spring Nevis. He told Duncan that he would stay there until they returned.

  Duncan instructed him the route to follow to the top, should he wish to continue, then dashed off to catch up with the wayward vanguard. After a breather, Henry did decide to follow, but the weather was closing in, and he stopped once more to await the return of his friends. An hour later he thought that they too must be lost and attempted a lone descent. Crawling and slithering down wet rock for over a thousand feet – now in zero visibility – he realised that he had lost the way altogether and was in what appeared to be a corrie and resolved to stop for the night. He had with him the equivalent of a modern bivvy bag, an oilskin cape and “squeezing between two immense blocks of granite on the side of the mountain, and close to one of the numerous streams of water winding down its stupendous sides,” there he spent a miserable night. At dawn it appeared to be clearing and he started to ascend, intending, if possible, to find out exactly where he was and “in which direction he should steer his course”. But the mist enveloped him again and he decided once more to descend – this time in a different direction.

  What he did for the remainder of the day is a mystery, for it was late afternoon before he got below the base of the cloud. And the “sea” (Loch Linnhe) was revealed with Glen Nevis “illuminated” by the bright rays of the setting sun. It took him over an hour to cross a raging torrent and he was almost drowned in the process. Then he “descried a shepherd
accompanied by his dog”. The shepherd was looking for lost sheep, not a lost walker, nevertheless he took him down to his cottage and provided him with “refreshments”, then drove him five miles to his hotel in Fort William in his rustic pony cart, an improvement on the sixteenth century when a bard described Glen Nevis as being inhabited by “thievish folk of evil habit”.

  Henry’s friends were overjoyed, for they had feared for his safety and “all supposed he was lost beyond recovery”. The summit party and the guide had not been lost and the group had assumed, when they reached the spring, that Henry must have decided to return to the Fort. They had called out his name as they descended, but there was no response. Reaching their hotel they were dismayed to learn that he had not showed up. “Being night it was impossible to prosecute a search until the next day, when, according to arrangement, eight guides were sent out at daybreak, not returning until night, and just before the safe arrival of the missing tourist, they being quite dispirited and sad, more especially the one who had been their guide on the ascent.”

  It was a happy conclusion to the often tragic adventures on the Ben and it is interesting to note that an experienced search party was dispatched so quickly. These Fort William guides formed what was probably the first organised rescue team of mountain guides in the British Isles.

  There have of course been countless lost souls on those rugged slopes since then and many fatalities. Probably more have died on Ben Nevis than on the notorious Eiger and some of the tragedies have been heart-breaking, especially concerning the young.

  On Christmas Eve 1956, when a great storm was brewing in the Atlantic, five poorly equipped Lancashire lads ascended South Castle Coire, a straightforward snow climb on Carn Dearg, that great rocky north-eastern outrider of Ben Nevis. At this time of year there are only about eight hours of daylight, if you’re lucky. When they exited the gully onto the flat top they were assaulted by a hurricane-force wind whipping up spindrift like shotgun pellets. They dragged their way to some icy rocks and huddled, trying in vain to get shelter.

  It was already getting dark and they could sporadically glimpse the lights of Fort William 4,000 feet below. By daylight four of them were dead. But one survivor managed to stumble down, having spent the night on the top, and reaching the town, staggered into the police station. The police on duty first thought that he was drunk, a Christmas reveller. He was there to report a tragedy! Four of his friends were still up there in a white hell of snow, wind and ice and, unbeknown to him, they were all dead.

  A rescue team comprising five policemen set off to try to locate the party in the severe storm. They met two well-equipped climbers descending from the mountain and Sergeant Henderson, who was leading the party, asked if he could borrow an ice axe. One of the climbers eventually agreed, but requested a signature for it! They warned the police rescue party that conditions were appalling on the summit.

  The police posse continued upwards but as conditions were getting progressively more stormy and icy Sergeant Henderson told his men to take shelter at some rocks and pushed on alone, crawling across the edge of the summit plateau with his borrowed ice axe driven in ahead of him to avoid being plucked off the mountain. Gusts of wind sounded like exploding shells, followed by an uncanny silence. Then it would start all over again. Though he didn’t know it at the time, he had to give up about fifty metres from where three of the bodies were eventually found. The fourth body was located close to the edge of the cliffs two days later.

  The bridle path (now the tourist path), which was constructed as access to the Observatory, also created a hazard. Here a dogleg on the trail, on the south side of the mountain, leads into the precipitous defile of Five Finger Gully. Close by, another great runnel known as Surgeon’s Gully, also awaits the unwary. Surgeon’s Gully is 1,500 feet long and, surprisingly, still awaits a complete ascent. The first ascent of the greater part of the gully, in twenty-one pitches, was made by two of my oldest climbing friends, Dr Derek Haworth and George Ritchie in August 1947. This climb didn’t include the top section of the gully or the direct ascent of a couple of the major pitches as these were beyond the skill of even Derek Haworth. However, many of these pitches had in fact been climbed previously by Dr Donald Duff and Jimmy Ness, both members of the Lochaber Mountain Rescue and the gully is called after Dr Duff who was the surgeon at the Belford Hospital in Fort William for many years. Above a deer track, which cuts across the gully, is the final section, where the gully splits into three separate drainage channels like the triple heads of a mythical monster. The superstitious could be forgiven in thinking that these three abysses, and the adjoining Five Finger Gully, are specifically placed to await the unwary descending from the country’s highest mountain, to transform a day of elation into one of tragedy.

  There have been numerous accidents at this location. In 1993 a party was caught out here. I have been fascinated by this incident which befell a father and son. It is a strange case of cause and effect: the cause, a navigational problem, and the effect, a remarkable escape, literally from the bowels of the mountain, accompanied by a gruesome discovery. But it wasn’t until a few weeks prior to writing this that I picked up the telephone and rang a number in rural England to obtain more information. This came from one of those involved, Herbert Henry Alfred Brooks, known as Reup. He takes up the story.

  Reup Brooks

  On returning from work the message was “Mountain Rescue wants to speak with you!” Even after nine years, the poignant reminder of that long day flashes back into my mind. Instantly the cold chill tingles up the spine and the events of the ordeal stirs my soul.

  Let me start at the beginning in the sleepy English village of Rolleston on Dove where we live. We, that is my two sons, Stuart then fourteen and David twelve, and our friend Peter Collins and I, had planned to drive to Scotland to climb Ben Nevis.

  It was the end of May 1993 when we piled into the car for the long journey north. I remember that there was a feeling of anticipation as there often is when embarking on a holiday venture. This one was to celebrate my fortieth birthday. We were lucky, the traffic wasn’t that bad and as we sped up the M6 the usual banter ensued. At Carlisle we broke the journey and stayed at the Youth Hostel overnight and after a late snack, hit the sack.

  Next day we were up early, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and were soon rolling once more. It was only when we were rising on the A82 above the nondescript village of Tyndrum that we felt we had reached the Highlands. We sped through the dark defile of Glencoe and about half an hour later entered Fort William. Here we got our first glimpse of our main objective, Ben Nevis. However we had decided to stay further up the Great Glen, some miles north-east of Fort William, at Loch Lochy Youth Hostel. This proved a wise choice as the Youth Hostel in Glen Nevis, situated at the foot of the Ben, is mobbed during the popular spring months.

  There was a long-standing joke between Peter and myself concerning a popular BBC TV documentary programme which was currently running called 999 – a series of real life rescue stories. Peter thought that I had a secret yen to star in one of the episodes, but it was never clear if I was supposed to be cast as victim or rescuer. This speculation proved to be the source of some amusement.

  I was up early next morning, cooked breakfast and made a substantial packed lunch. I asked Peter if he was ready for a good day on the hill. Big Ben was our objective.

  “Of course, but are you?” he returned.

  I muttered something about too much black pudding for breakfast and being not just spot on. We piled into the car once more. The morning was clear and, as we drove back to the outskirts of Fort William, somebody brought up jocularly the amount of petrol that the car was gobbling. We turned off on the Glen Nevis road and drove up the single-track road to arrive at the car park at the head of the glen. Here the Water Slab, which cascades down the south side of the Ben, sparkled like liquid tinsel in the morning light.

  Our plan was to ascend Carn Mor Dearg, to the east and north of the Ben, connected t
o the summit by a rocky tightrope called the Carn Mor Dearg arete. From the summit of the Ben we would descend to the Youth Hostel in Glen Nevis by the tourist path.

  We got out of the car and sorted out the gear. I had the extra large packed lunch in my rucksack. Peter and the other two were well aware of the fringe benefits of hill walking with me! We were well equipped, with all the essential mountaineering gear, map, compass, first aid etc. It was great to be heading up the trail through the dramatic Nevis Gorge, then skirted the pristine white Steall waterfall and on across the flats, a sheep-studded meadow, even as a shinty pitch. In minutes, we were at Steall ruins – an old croft house. One of us remarked, I can’t remember who, how the scenery was so fresh, green and beautiful. Then we followed the course of the Allt Coire Guibhsachan. I was feeling better now, the black pudding had made peace with my stomach. On the path, where I took over the lead, we met two people. I greeted them with, “Safe travel, folks.” With hindsight it would perhaps have been more appropriate for one of the descending party to have said this to us!

  The day was dry when we left the car park but above 1,000 feet it was misty. We had read the weather forecast in Fort William the previous day, and it was reasonable. Of course we had experienced such misty conditions before in the Lake District. However, this was the first time we had ventured into Scotland.

  Eventually we reached the summit of Cam Mor Dearg. Normally this is a stunning viewpoint for the Ben cliffs, but we were unlucky with the cloud cover and took the easy descent to the arete which connects with the loftier Ben.

  We passed four other walkers on the way. It was calm, but the poor visibility was a nuisance, being down to about twenty metres. I stopped and shouted, “Look what I’ve found, Peter, a 5p coin!” This seemed to amuse everyone. “Good old Reup, searching for small change even at this altitude.”

  At 2.00 pm we all shook hands on the summit and took some photographs. We noted that the temperature had dropped and that there was a great deal of snow around. Visibility was deteriorating. We remarked at the number of people on the summit, it certainly seemed a popular place and it was at this point that I handed the map and compass to Peter who took a bearing.