The North Face

The CIC hut below Tower Ridge

There's usually a mountaineering epic prefaced by , The North Face" . Not this time.

Thursday was a day off from milking so walk up the Allt a Mhuillin (Mill burn) to the CIC hut below Ben Nevis was in order. It wasn't much more than a stroll but  It does  take you into the heart of some spectacular mountain scenery below the North Face.

The path through the Forestry Commission woodlands is so well engineered and has such a good surface it wouldn't be out of place in the quad of an Oxbridge college. It took me two hours to get up and an hour and a half to get down; the perfect afternoon daunder.

The CIC (Charles Inglis Clark) hut sits in a sheltered hollow below Tower Ridge. Clark died in WW1 in Mesopotamia, now Iraq.  his parents had the hut built in his memory.

There is a charming black and white film of the opening of the hut at Easter 1929,. The assembled mountaineers are mostly wearing celluloid collars, ties, tweed jackets caps and trilby hats.  Take a look you'll enjoy it as much as the walk, www.ssa.nls.uk/film/7702