14 - If the path of painful chippings was an ordeal, the snow field was on a par with it - a painless yet morale sapping trudge right at the very death. Everyone could really have done without that final ordeal in the mist. Any childlike delight when the snow first came into view, soon disappeared once you were walking on the stuff. Nor was it like the magical blanket of white one might expect to find having gone through the back of the wardrobe into Narnia - oh no....it was old, has-been snow, pink dirty stuff that one would never make a snow man with. Struggling up that last slope really was hard work akin to walking up a sand dune. The mist didnt help either. The prospect of ever seeing Caroline again was slim to begin with - in this mist there was no chance - while the Ghost melted into the atmosphere to become wraithlike, no more than a suggestion of someone. To the left of this, by now, despised snowfield there was a gaping chasm. I felt tempted to look over the edge but it would have been far too dangerous so I hurried on; like everyone else, anxious to be done with Ben Nevis once and for all. And then appearing out of the mist we beheld a very strange, primitive barn-like ruin of stone. Was it some kind of keep or shelter for grim faced, rough-kilted highlanders retreating from the invading Sassenachs? There was another one further back and just ahead of these was the summit. We posed for photographs at the top. Cedric, the poor little reptilian Origami creature I had made was disintegrating in the moist atmosphere. I left him in a little crevice on the cairn at the top. He looked at me beseechingly, almost pleading with those little eyes not to leave him. But what was I to do? Time was of the essence. I said goodbye to my little paper companion and headed off back down.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 20:29:33 +0000
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