UKC

Tower Ridge on Ben Nevis is perhaps the most famous of all the UK's winter routes and is a 'must do' for every winter climber.

Here we celebrate the remarkable route with an excellent video guide from Alan Kimber and a selection of the hundreds of superb photos from the UKC User Galleries.

Read more at http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/item.php?id=59513

In reply to UKC News: Good stuff !

In reply to UKC News:

Good old Alan Kimber - must be a candidate for UNESCO listing by now. He was very briefly my boss at Loch Eil Outward Bound, many yers ago.

The first time I ever did the ridge was solo in late December in terrible weather and thin conditions. Half way along I met Alan Hinks and Gerry Gore who kindly invited me to join them considering the hooly conditions that were developing. We duly got lost and traversed into Tower Gulley by mistake, finishing by cimbing it on almost no ice. Didn't see another soul all day, which was not unusual back then.
I did the ridge maybe a dozen times in later years, but of course it is the first time that I remember best.

In reply to UKC News:
A bit of trivia to supplement the video, which was filmed on 2 April this year - the Saturday of the Easter weekend. We had a club trip up to Scotland that weekend. A couple of mates made an early start for Tower Ridge. They were the first team on the ridge but were overtaken by Alan Kimber and his partner on the lower sections of the ridge. They are the team shown in the video. I started a couple of hours later in a team of three and we headed for Glovers Chimney. Alan's team crossed Tower Gap just as one of the guys in my team was leading the chimney pitch. The other team were not far behind and crossed the Gap just as our leader got to it, completely by coincidence. As can be seen in the video, it was a fantastic blue sky day. The following two days were spent in the clag on Aonach Mor...

In reply to UKC News:

everytime i try to watch the video it just loops back to the start every 30 seconds, is it anywhere else to watch?

In reply to UKC News:
Many Thanks Alan,
This video brought back memories from a long time back
it was just like being there mate,
Roy H

In reply to UKC News: A fantastic video

In reply to Misha:

Some more related trivia from me...


We did NE Buttress the same day and it was indeed glorious, but we were still greeted by a temporary deterioration to near-whiteout conditions in a chilly, rising wind on our (presumably much later) top-out.