Right, as some of you may know, I expended a bit of effort over the weekend to make myself the highest man in Britain (temporarily) by "walking" to the top of Ben Nevis. There's a nice tourist trail which takes you all the way up and requires just moderate fitness/stamina and about 4-5 hours for the 1300m ascent and descent.
But that would be "easy", wouldn't it? So instead, we opt to walk along the coire past the North face of the Ben and up an adjacent mountain, Carn Mor Dearg. This required us to don crampons and wield our ice axes in anger in order to ascend a reasonably steep (45 degree) easterly face of CMD. The pitch was about 500m vertical which didn't look too bad from the bottom... but when nearing the top, a quick (and foolish) glance back down highlighted how bad things would be if our crampons gave out or we popped the front points out of the ice. I'd hate to think what speed we'd be doing by the time we reached the rocks at the bottom
. We had a short rope but using it would have slowed us down by an hour or more as we'd require 20+ pitches on that expanse of vertical. Wind wasn't bad so we just solo'd it, cutting a ledge here or there to rest and even a bucket seat to have a proper (sit down) pause for 5 minutes.
Eventually we climbed up to the summit of CMD, which also took us onto the ridge or arete which joins it to its bigger neighbour, Ben Nevis. CMD is a pretty high mountain by Scottish standards at over 1200m but there was still nearly 200m of further ascent to go to get to the summit of the Ben. And about 2km of one of the finest ridge "walks" in Britain. Winds were still fairly reasonable (not the 50-70mph gusts forecast) so although it was very exposed, it wasn't too hairy.
Unfortunately, from a photography point of view, the heavily overcast and snowing conditions didn't lend themselves to taking snaps (neither did the 500m sheer drop on either side of the ridge!) so although I took a few pictures, there were none which really did it for me.
We eventually got back, 9 hours after setting off having ascended and descended a total of 1800m with about 20km of horizontal under our belts. All good fun except for wrecking my shins/feet (and one of which was apparently broken!)
So, my effort photo isn't going to be from that.
Back home with the family, we decided to go on the Gruffalo trail in Argyll yesterday. Weather was pretty reasonable and unlike Saturday, good enough to take some pictures. It was a nice easy walk (easy enough for a 2 and 5 year old!) through the forest and my wife and I conspired to set up yet another easter egg hunt. So this is a complete shoehorn as it's a photo showing the complete absence of any effort on my part - I think deserved, though
Week 13: (Absence of) Effort by
Paul M, on Flickr
As we were ambling through the forest, there was a clearing and the lower late afternoon light hit the grass and trees in front of us. It was a lovely sight so I wanted to capture it in camera. We had occasional drizzle showers, so the sky alternated between blue and overcast - which you can probably make out from the sky in this shot. But the sun was still finding its way through between the clouds
And just further along the path we came across some horseshoe fungus which were clinging on (with a bit of effort, I hasten to add) to a fallen tree:
Week 13: No Effort To Make This On Theme by
Paul M, on Flickr
This one is unashamed in its (horse)shoehorn-ness. And it's not really a photo for the theme at all, but I quite liked it so thought I'd stick it up.
At least I've been able to put in some decent effort to consuming Easter eggs in order to replace the 7000 calories burned (apparently!) on Saturday