It was a very wild night. The ferocious wind battered the tent and I was constantly woken by the noise. One of the scariest things was being able to hear the gusts of wind approaching. They sounded like an express train coming and I had no idea if the tent was in for shaking, severe battering or annihilation. At first light I noticed that one of the guy lines had snapped. One of the best features of the Halliberg Soulo tent is that each pole has two guy lines on each side. In calm weather there is only the need to use one but I'd made sure all the guy lines were independently secured. My plan was to climb to Garn Mor Dearg and follow the sharp ridge round to Ben Nevis. The views from the tent door confirmed this would be madness as the winds on the ridge would be more severe than here.

Morning view from the tent,
almost straight down to the valley bottom

The rough shelf after the tent had been removed

I had two options: stay and wait hoping for the weather to improve (not likely) or move to a safer location. Yesterday my plan had be to camp by a spring I'd seen on Google Earth to the west and below the summit of Carn Beg Dearg. Even if I didn't camp there I still wanted to investigate it. I decided to move as the wind here was still severe. I sat in the tent with the door partly open looking down towards the CIC (Charle Inglis Clark memorial hut) when a gust of wind hit the tent and sucked out my blue mug. Fortunately I'd finished the coffee that was in it. I looked down to see it lying on a ledge just below. As I reached for my boots so I could recover it another fierce gust picked it up and propelled it horizontally in to space then vertically down o bounce it off the rocks below.

My favourite blue mug, which I'd carried on many Himalayan expeditions, was now nothing more than a blue spec in the valley below. In seconds it was a thousand feet down and vanished from sight. Maybe someone will find it in the future and give it a good home. I packed up camp and was on my way up the steep slope by 8:30. My objective was about the same altitude but the terrain of steep loose boulders made it too difficult to cross so the only way was up. At times the wind forced me down on to my hands and knees and occasionally the gusts were so strong I had to drop to the ground and lay there till it subsided. I came to a cairn on the ridge and immediately followed a faint path down the much gentler slop to the north.

A much better pitch

view from the tent