BEN NEVIS - The CMD Route

good morning everybody it has been a while since I've done one of these videos it is 5 30 in the morning and my plan today is to take the North Face up and Nevis so this is actually the scramble route it's not the typical one that many tourists would do to get to the highest point in the UK So today we're gonna go from the North Face car park we're gonna follow this Trail where we'll meet up with another one follow us through the cic hut and then from there we'll scramble around I believe we go up 10 more days and over to Ben Nevis the terrain beyond the end of the path is rough Steep and Rocky and should only be considered by experienced Hill Walkers and climbers okay so I'm gonna try and do my best to describe this Trail what I see how difficult it is and kind of like give you some cinematic views of what's along it's like [Music] thank you [Music] came to the first fork in the road here there's actually a second Park in the road there's another one here that you can choose to go right if you'd like uh you can go that way but the main one here as you'll see this one goes a little bit uphill that's what I'm gonna take it's more of a straighter route but you are welcome to go this way it leads to the same place but uh we're gonna go this way [Music] okay so I figured I'd use this time quickly to explain how I got to where I'm at it took roughly two and a half hours to get from the Edinburgh Airport to The North Face car park and that's with a stop as well at Tesco to get some groceries and driving at night so I was driving a bit slower I am on the opposite side of the road so you are on the UK side of the road you're driving on the left-hand side is it left hand side or is it right hand drive no it's right hand drive left hand side yeah oh man so much education going on on this trip already one more thing I want to point out before I forget is when you are driving here you will have to be cautious of deer crossing the road as I found out I nearly hit one swerved out of the way set my groceries flying uh ended up cutting my hand open just trying to get my groceries later in the evening but yeah just keep an eye out when you're driving I mean you're safe wherever you are but be careful oh I think I just got my first view of Ben Nevis [Music] thank you since crossing over into this plateau-ish type area the wind's picked up a little bit it's a bit chilly this morning I'd say it's probably about 13 degrees Celsius uh I can't really do my math in my head we double it 13 26 add 32 so about 58 degrees if that math is correct uh Fahrenheit uh but yeah this is one of them working with right now [Music] this fork in the road is very important if you take the right path you're going to go to the cic Hut which has no path leading up to Ben Nevis so make sure to keep an eye out here and you're going to go up here to the left uh trust me I just went about 100 meters down there and I'm like I'm still really close to this River so if you find yourself following and really close to the river you know you've went too far you're gonna have to backtrack a little bit and this is where the trail gets a little bit more off the beaten path as you'll see look at this this is pure navigation where is the next step I might go this way actually [Music] all right as you can see I am right up in the clouds No views anyway pretty moist up here it's pretty moist I really just say that word in a sentence anyway that's weird um it's pretty wet up here 's picking up a bit of a lot I just got done taking a bunch of switchbacks and now I can finally see like the first summit up ahead I mean I still got a little ways to go but I know it's not too far up there you can see if I go over to this edge here oh the winds died down a bit it's actually so tranquil right now haven't seen a single person on this like but I believe the technical part is up head and I'm looking forward to that it's not too wet so it should be pretty easy let's talk about and now I guess we gotta go down oh oh [Music] I just ducked down on one side of the collar now the wind was getting really Fierce up there so I'm actually heading this direction here it looks like there's a trail that goes down and it's going to come back up it's been a lot of this Red Rock up here really easy to see the path there's a few spots where I had to use my hands do like a little bit of a scramble but no knife edges or anything like that I would say the skinniest section like the narrowest section was probably two meters wide or three meters I would say it was the narrowest part nothing like scary the wind is the worst thing because it feels like it wants to push you without a doubt it's definitely gotten more technical now I can understand why it's the hard to wrap it's so much fun though I'm loving it really getting to use my hands a lot more as you can see like even areas like this there is no Trail anymore once in a while it pops up but for the most part it's just kind of find your own route and that's my type of hiking I really enjoy that makes you feel like you're really just out in the middle of nowhere I mean I guess I I kind of am right now [Music] oh [Music] been a big boulder section right now and there's no Trail I had an idea of which way to go based on my maps but then I saw this Karen I just made a beeline for it now I know where to go so always follow them well not always but when you have an idea and you see one it's probably a good idea [Music] foreign ly five hours of hiking uphill I've made it to the summit didn't expect there to be so much snow up here didn't expect there to be no people either I guess the early bird gets the worm made it to the top of the UK oh that is a nice one to check off the list I've now completed Ireland's highest Wales is highest Scotland's highest in the UK all that's left would be England in the Lake District wonder when I'll get there all right well there's not much to use here this is what we got but that's all right it's an achievement in itself so now instead of taking the same route back I'm going to take the tourist route down a bit and then there's like a round trip I can do instead of going one way there one way back same so yeah I'll keep recording for the rest of the video probably won't have as much information unless there's any kind of points that I really need to point out I'm coming down the tourist route now and already we've passed I say we because I've actually met up with Tim from Germany he made it to the summit not too long after me uh and on the way down we've already passed like five six people and there's two more coming up but this is the first time I've had to walk through actually on snow on this whole track there's gonna be a lot more up there too isn't it yeah cool enjoy this is wild man I knew it was gonna happen [Music] [Music] foreign and the main tourist route I'm on the route back to the North Face car park now and the sun hit for like 10 seconds oh let me tell you that was something couldn't believe it and now it's gone again but hopefully it comes back maybe it's actually Sunny once I get completely out of the clouds legs are feeling it though I am sore right now I don't know how much farther I gotta go this Trail is nice so even the trail coming down there was a section where it was just Stone steps so definitely a change of pace from what I was doing going up but it's nice to just be in dry weather so we'll get to the end here I'll keep showing you guys what's in store until I get back to the car park all right so this part here you can go up this way and it brings you another direction that you could go back to the North Face car park but online I've read that this direction is the quickest route so I'm gonna take that way the only problem with this way and this is the reason why I'm doing this video part of the reason obviously I like making these videos anyway but I couldn't really find any video documenting this part and my maps and other maps that I see online don't really have a trail system so I'm gonna check it out and document it so next person hopefully you guys find this helpful and you can come and do it this way without any problems let me get lost thank you and hopefully there's not too much bogginess see this up here is worrying me [Music] [Music] so when you see this fence there's a hole in it here there's actually like a trail it looks like a four four by four or ATV I've been has been driving down it you can see tracks here as well uh so this is where I'm gonna walk back down you can see where the deforestation is happening that's kind of where the trail is just on the other side of the trees the trees are along a river it started to clear up a bit so you can see the mountain uh that I summoned over here and then the collar that we traversed up to Ben Nevis pretty cool glorious day after all totally worth it I don't even mind that I didn't get a view from the top totally worth it just got down to the river and it's a simple Crossing and then it's back to the car part from there awesome thanks out guys hope you enjoyed this one like it and I'll be sure to make more foreign

Channel: Chase Davidson

Views: 9,079

Keywords: Ben Nevis, Hiking, Scotland, Edinburgh, Highland, Glen Coe, CMD, GoPro, Mavic 2, Coalatree, Chase, Davidson, Chase Davidson

Id: XDcZ6SNxmZM

Length: 15min 11sec (911 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023