Wild Land News no 69, Summer 2007

Letter to the Editor - Ben Nevis path Article

Ben Nevis violated

A bit of the wild place that is Ben Nevis has been raped. Not a bit owned by the JMT [John Muir Trust], I should add, but a bit right on JMT's boundary. A NEW PATH has been constructed, nearly two metres wide and approx 500m long, from the sharp bend (alt about 600m) on the normal tourist route to the outflow of the Half-way Lochan on an otherwise trackless part of the mountain. There never has been a path here, none is marked on the OS 1:50,000 map, nor on the old one inch. My notion of hill pathwork is to control erosion and restore landscape, not facilitate access. There was no erosion here. This path goes absolutely nowhere that anybody normally goes and ends abruptly at the outflow burn.

I have been going on Ben Nevis since 1959 on a fairly regular basis. A day on the Ben is a 'big' day, especially on the north east side, which this path geologically is. Ben Nevis can provide adventurous climbing and mountaineering, summer and winter, from sea level to summit unparalleled in the UK - challenging, physically demanding, with a sense of remoteness, grandeur, remoteness, scale, and a sense of achievement afterwards. The violation rapes the idea of the ultimate in British mountaineering.

I am convinced this (unfinished?) path is part of a longer project to extend a path network for the commercial interests in Fort William (broadly speaking, tourism), and should be resisted, even removed, at the insistence of all who value the iconic status of Ben Nevis and what it means to mountaineers nationally and internationally.

John Allen
by email