Ben Nevis

     Today just about killed both Paul and I. We had a crazy day. We hiked Ben Nevis, which is the highest point in all of Great Britain. Yes, yes, I know you are all so impressed! Such an amazing feat! Well, Ben Nevis is only 4,400 feet high. It is lower than the elevation that I live at in Cedar City. However, we were starting from basically sea level. That has to count for something right?
     Actually the hike was really intense. For some reason, trails over here are not mostly dirt paths, they take the rock from the path and make steps up the mountain. Its a nice change of pace sometimes, but going up and up and up thousands of stairs is a killer workout. At least the weather was somewhat in our favor It didn't pour rain on us, and there wasn't any fog. The clouds weren't super low on the mountain to start, but they did sneak a little lower as our hike progressed.
    The first half of the hike was up those thousands of stairs. The second half of the hike was walking on loose rock and inside of the clouds. I just have to say clouds are nothing like we thought they were! They don't taste like marshmallows, they are not fluffy, and you can't eat them like cotton candy. They are wet, humid, and cold, and you can't really feel them but you can see how foggy the rest of everything else is.
     Paul and I toyed with the idea of going back half way. We had somewhere else to get to and didn't want to take all day to get where we needed to go. But we decided to keep going. To be honest, the last half of the hike was really ugly. Rocks were the only things you would see. Thats all. Just rocks. Well we saw lots of people too, and cloud, but mostly rocks. The top was very cold, very humid, and very windy. People at the top had built small forts with the large amounts of rocks so people were hiding out them. We sat by some rocks, had a snack and headed down. We really didn't want to be overly miserable on our hike.
    The trip down was another adventure. For once, the thousands of steps down were better than the dirt path. Paul and I tried to get down the mountain in half the time it took us to get up, so we ran a lot. We mostly ran down the stairs. Surprisingly we got down the mountain in an hour and forty five minutes. It took us three hours to get up. So we felt pretty successful.

The start of the hike, we were still happy at this point in the day

The view behind us from the trail

This is one of those cute streams that just trickles all the way down the side of the hill

In the distance you can see the trail zig zagging up. It was pretty steep.

I told Paul he looked cute with his pants rolled up, and he gave me that face...

I had planned on wearing shorts and not bringing a jacket, but Paul told me I would want pants and a coat. I am glad that even though I didn't want to listen to him I did. I ended up unrolling my pants and zipping my coat all the way up it got so cold!

Another little waterfall along the trail

This is a picture of the trail, and the cloud we were in. 

We made it to the top!

This is a cairn on the trail. I guess the have to make them HUGE and sturdy so the wind won't destroy them. It is a good thing they are so big because in the clouds, its hard to tell where you are all the time

That is the trail at the top of the mountain. It isn't much to look at, but oh well.

The clouds lifted a little on the way down. This is a view off the trail

    From Ben Nevis we had a three hour drive to our sleeping destination. Good thing Paul is a great husband, because I fell asleep for some of the drive. We got to the Gilardi's home just as they were eating dinner. They were so kind and invited us to join them. I forget how wonderful it is to have a home cooked meal when you eat out all the time.
     After our long hike we were exhausted. We had an early night again and basically went to sleep as early as we could.