Having previously completed Curved Ridge, Aonach Eagach and Forcan Ridge, I fancied a challenge ... Peter and I had high hopes of obtaining the summit of Ben Nevis via the North Face scramble known as "Ledge Route" on Saturday 14th September 2013. Parking in the North Face carpark at Torlundy, we were 2 hours to the entrance of Gully number 5 on the North Face. This is at the top of the scree pile that extends all the way down to the CIC hut, On entering the Gully things started to go astray. First mistake - not having a helmet. Scree all over the place means loose rocks bouncing downwards to the unsuspecting climber below! We then missed the right hand turn and scrambled up Gully 5. Then clag and rain moved in and the rocks became horribly slippy - arghh. We looked back and realised that we'd missed the actual ledge we should have gone up - complete will the lovely wet sloping slab at the top. Our main objective at this point was to retreat safely to the start of the ledge route. We had to remove our backpacks to descramble the Gully 5 and whilst lowering them down Peter's water bottle fell out and down the hill, being decapitated too. Thank goodness that was not our heads! Eventually we made it down to the bit where we should have headed right and up. We mused over the happenings over a cup of coffee and decided that the slippy slab was not for us, due to its proximity to the cliffs, so made the decision to retreat down and just enjoy the views of the North Face and take lots of photos and video instead. The clag cleared and the sun came out briefly and we met two walkers heading fro Ledge Route. One of them had done it before and assured us that the slab was the only difficult part of the walk, but we'd made our minds up and wished them all the best. By the time we neared the CIC hut lower down the slopes, we could see they'd reached the top of that section and were already quite high up. We soaked up the moody views of the North face of The Ben for an hour or so, before heading back along the path to the North Face carpark. At the style, just before the trees, we met a local guy who'd went up the Castle Ridge and down the Ledge route. He said we could have avoided the slab by going via Moonlight buttress, so if we go up there again, that sounds like a plan! I've already got Ben Nevis and CMD ticked off, so didn't miss out on adding to my tally, I felt a little disappointed in failing on the Ledge Route, but we both made it back down safely and had a great day out.

• published: 15 Sep 2013
• views: 118