Why to do The Three Peaks Challenge ? …. the first “Challenge” Ben Nevis:

I never was in Scotland so far – it was on my list but …. time….

So when I was boarding the plane from Zurich to Glasgow, I was really wondering why I now start to experience Scotland by only ascending The “Ben Nevis” – some call it “Bad”Nevis.

Especially as I was tortured with a cold. My nose was heavily running and I had a really bad feeling. During the flight, I still did remember that I collected information in advance about this mountain – and read that 3oo days a year, Ben Nevis’ peak is lost in fog. What a nice place to climb ….

In my condition, I was anything but convinced that I could do this – as the first peak challenge is the next morning.

But what adequate medicine and even more positive motivation could enable you to do!

On Friday morning, September 28^th, 2018 at 8.30 the adventure started, after a short, but deep and relaxing sleep.

Looking always to the sky – to see the top of this shrouded in a legend mountain – I jumped out of the bus, my group and me did a last group photo with the Autovista/Unicef Banner and started with our guides Mike and Christine.

Not even 10 min later we did the first stop, and they advised us how to behave: we should keep going “slow and steady” and enjoy the walk.

Through more than 1350m ascending – without any flat path, we were overtaken by some younger and really motivated hikers. But look out: they needed a lot more breaks than us – going slow and steady – so after a while we overtook them back and did this up to the top several times.

After a little more than the half – the legendary Scottish fog was suddenly appearing. It got much colder, windy and there was time for a break, some additional layers, a hood and gloves.

It got to be really unfriendly and in the same time the path changed from nice stairs formed of rocks to a stony, rocky gravel landscape – like it must be on the moon or on the Mars.

So after 4 and a half hours we were reaching the summit, still very foggy – but not windy any more. We took some nice pictures, celebrated our success of having reached the first summit and returned immediately.

During descending the mountain, it even start raining – which increased damnable weather situation! … and we realized as well how much we were really ascending during the morning. The way was never showing the end.

But after almost two hours – clouds were disappearing and the sun warmed again – so that some of our over motivated guys started to descend really quick – almost a kind of “running downstairs”.

It seemed that we were anticipating that Michelle and Clare waited with our favorite chocolate – they nicely waited there to congratulate for the first successful summit.