VIDEO & PHOTOS: Tower Ridge - Ben Nevis

© sgl0jd
Tower Ridge on Ben Nevis is perhaps the most famous of all the UK's winter routes and is a 'must do' for every winter climber.

Here we celebrate the remarkable route with an excellent video guide from Alan Kimber and a selection of the hundreds of superb photos from the UKC User Galleries.

From the UKC Logbook page for Tower Ridge:

800m. Almost certainly the finest winter climb in the UK available to weekend warriors, and certainly the longest. Tower Ridge continues to fascinate and compel, with a magnificent mix of wall, ridge, and traverse lines taking the boldest classic alpine route almost to the very summit of Britain's highest mountain. The two crux pitches, the Eastern Traverse and the Tower Gap are formidable obstacles in any conditions, and many a party has been benighted attempting to solve their mysteries. On a ridge like this, route finding should be obvious, but in poor weather it can be a nightmare.
FA. J.N.Collie, G.A.Sollie, J.Collier 30/Mar/1894

VIDEO: Tower Ridge

This video was made by Alan Kimber of westcoast-mountainguides

UKC User Photo Gallery - Tower Ridge IV,3:

Eastern Traverse Tower Ridge  © bryn
Eastern Traverse Tower Ridge
© bryn

Two climbers finishing the top pitch of Tower Ridge  © sgl0jd
Two climbers finishing the top pitch of Tower Ridge
© sgl0jd

Tower Ridge  © Mike Pescod
Tower Ridge
© Mike Pescod, Feb 2004

photo
Climber on the Great Tower before tackling Tower gap
© hwackerhage, Jan 2007

photo
moving fast on Tower Ridge, Ben Nevis
© Sean Kelly

Tower ridge finish in late season  © hwackerhage
Tower ridge finish in late season
© hwackerhage, Mar 2007

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21 Dec, 2010
Good stuff !
21 Dec, 2010
Good old Alan Kimber - must be a candidate for UNESCO listing by now. He was very briefly my boss at Loch Eil Outward Bound, many yers ago. The first time I ever did the ridge was solo in late December in terrible weather and thin conditions. Half way along I met Alan Hinks and Gerry Gore who kindly invited me to join them considering the hooly conditions that were developing. We duly got lost and traversed into Tower Gulley by mistake, finishing by cimbing it on almost no ice. Didn't see another soul all day, which was not unusual back then. I did the ridge maybe a dozen times in later years, but of course it is the first time that I remember best.
22 Dec, 2010
A bit of trivia to supplement the video, which was filmed on 2 April this year - the Saturday of the Easter weekend. We had a club trip up to Scotland that weekend. A couple of mates made an early start for Tower Ridge. They were the first team on the ridge but were overtaken by Alan Kimber and his partner on the lower sections of the ridge. They are the team shown in the video. I started a couple of hours later in a team of three and we headed for Glovers Chimney. Alan's team crossed Tower Gap just as one of the guys in my team was leading the chimney pitch. The other team were not far behind and crossed the Gap just as our leader got to it, completely by coincidence. As can be seen in the video, it was a fantastic blue sky day. The following two days were spent in the clag on Aonach Mor...
22 Dec, 2010
everytime i try to watch the video it just loops back to the start every 30 seconds, is it anywhere else to watch?
23 Dec, 2010
Many Thanks Alan, This video brought back memories from a long time back it was just like being there mate, Roy H
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