A sunny morning. After breakfast, we headed up the steep path that starts near the youth hostel in Glen Nevis to meet the lower part of the Mountain Track (otherwise known as the Tourist Route). After a while we turned off for a grade 1 gully/stream scramble to head up to Meall an t-Suidhe. Not being used to gill scrambling, I found it a bit wet – it would probably be a bit easier if you do not worry about getting wet. Further up, we moved away from the gill up a steep rock and heather hillside (where I worried about picking up more ticks). There were quite a few biggish spiders with their webs in slightly awkward places. At one point I chose not to take a line I would have liked to go up so that I did not have to destroy a spider’s web.
There were good views up Ben Nevis and in other directions from the top of Meall an t-Suidhe. We descended from this top to the lochan below, crossing its outflow. Once we joined the path, we followed it further along northwards to look at/recce the early part of the route we wanted to take up the Ben. It started raining a bit, and we turned around to head back down the Mountain Track. It was busy with people on this main path: we passed a couple with several husky-like dogs; a helicopter hovered around for a short time; we passed a couple that we remembered seeing some days earlier. We took the same route back to the campsite. We planned to go up Ben Nevis itself via the Carn Mor Dearg route the next day.
