The Longest Day
By Mark Furniss
On day 1 of Andy Stratford’s CIC hut meet, Jo and myself took about 2.5 hours to the top of Ledge Route grade II, finding few difficulties, we did however take 1 hour longer than the rapid duo of Gareth and James (a warning perhaps?).
That night in the hut, we mentioned we might attempt Tower Ridge. Rob, a Cumbrian climber, said that most of Tower Ridge was just the same standard as Ledge Route. The next day we got up leisurely, left the hut at 7.45am, headed around the Douglas Boulder and up the steep snow slopes to the Douglas Gap. We roped up and tackled the steep verglassed chimney, Jo leading onto the ridge. Moving together on a short rope soon turned to moving together on a long rope, finding occasional running belay slings on sloping boulders. We then hit the steeper terrain of thinly iced slabs with increasingly large drop offs to both sides – time to start pitching.
On and on up steepish exposed ground asking, ‘where is the Little Tower?’, I still don’t know when we passed it! The breeze was picking up, we were a bit chilly and had not been eating or drinking anything; the mental concentration didn’t allow it. Questions crossed our minds ‘had we taken on too much? Where was the easy ground of Ledge Route?’ Oh well.... snapping out of it Jo put her spare down jacket on and felt better, I shivered and continued. Moving together on a very narrow balancy snowy ridge section the rope went tight just metres short of what would have been a good runner. Behind me I could just make out ‘Come Back!’ Oh heck, Jo was out of view down the ridge so I edged carefully backwards knowing there were no runners between us, just a long rope. A slip off the ridge at this point would mean a giant pendulum and a hope that your partner remembers to jump off the opposite side of the ridge. Unfortunately as I weigh 4 stones more than Jo this would likely result in a giant catapult landing her in Fort William. Anyway the rope between us had become looped around some ice below the ridge but with a lot of persuasion it came free, phew! Thirty minutes later we stood looking up at the unmistakable Great Tower. The belay beneath it does not allow the second a view of the Eastern Traverse, (just as well, because Jo is not keen on traverses). It was a thrilling traverse with few runners on the edge of a huge void. Belayed in a groove taking in Jo’s rope I could hear her singing, (apparently it helps on bottomless traverses). Arriving at the top of the Great Tower we caught the beautiful sunset and looked in awe at the knife edge ridge leading to Tower Gap and the route ahead to the final steepening.
(Jo) – up to this point I had been making a check of the progress of climbers over on the Orion Face. I realised we’d been moving slowly but consoled myself with the thought ‘well at least we weren’t the only ones climbing so late’....on reaching the Great Tower, we were the only ones....it felt a bit lonely.
Head torches on and belayed in Tower Gap I saw a light in the sky and said to Jo ‘maybe the rescue helicopter is coming to get us’, ‘No’ she said ’it’s just a plane, come on and get across the gap’. With axes in thin ice, a high right step onto rock and a view below straight down Glovers Chimney, I pulled up, my crampon skated and my heart skipped a beat. Trying again I pulled across, got a high axe placement in a crack, then ignored style and used my knee. (Jo) – The climb up out of the gap was as tricky as Mark made it look and I’m sure he made it harder for me by chipping off the last decent ice with his axe, still, I didn’t use my knee.
A further 3 pitches in the dark, digging out boulders for belays brought us to the final headwall, where we managed to fix 3 ice screws for a belay. Up the steep snow, aware of the 30m runout, I carefully pulled over the cornice. After chipping out a snow bollard belay, Jo climbed up and at 10pm, we lay on the top of Ben Nevis under the moon and stars, feeling relief that the world was flat again.
Jo turned her phone on and James instantly rang, ‘Are you okay? We were just considering sending the rescue team out’. We crossed the moonlit plateau and descended No.4 Gully, then missed the normal route down the final slopes. Encountering a small icefall we abseiled from an Abalakov thread, and eventually stumbled back to the hut at 1.15am, just 17 hours after departing.
We were met by James and Jim who had kindly waited up for us and had patiently reboiled the kettle a few dozen times expecting us sooner. They made us tea and toasted bagels with chocolate spread. Fantastic, time for bed... zzzzzzz.
