My first day of winter

Today was the test to see if I have eaten too many cakes over the summer! On the walk in to the North Face of Ben Nevis, I was starting to think that I had. I just couldn't keep my knees above the snow. After 'swimming' up to the CIC hut, I realised that its not my 'winter weight' that was the problem but the vast amounts of snow up there. Kenny and I swam up to Fat Boy Slim (VI,6) on Secondary Tower Ridge hoping we would find tracks from Blair and Dave the day before. Unfortunately there were none! We did the route in two pitches, I did the first in a long 60m section, covering some great mixed terrain and an icy gully. The top pitch had a fantastic squeeze which we just managed to get through with a little bit of grunting! If you climb with a rucksack you will have to push it through first! A quick abseil down Vanishing Gully led us back to our packs for another swim down to the car.