Climbing Ben Lomond on an (actually?) sunny day

On Friday, Kate, Flo, and I skipped class to go climb Ben Lomond with Clara. It is roughly only a 2 hour drive away from Edinburgh… unfortunately we managed to mess up the directions and it ended up taking us 4.5 hours to get to the mountain (Shout out to Clara for doing all the driving this entire past week with a manual and on the wrong side of the road!!!!).

The climb was a loop that went up the mountain on a very grassy side, and then descended down the mountain on the other, more rocky and rugged side. It took us roughly 4 hours to do the entire 12 km loop.

On the way up, I offered my water to anyone who needed it. Before giving it to them I let them know that recently it had started to smell weird but I was sure it was all fine. Flo took a big gulp and informed me that the water tasted disgusting, so upon further investigation I discovered that there was mold growing all along the inside of my bottle (that is healthy right?). Flo wasn’t happy.

At the top of the mountain we started finding ice and patches of snow. It even started to snow as we hiked down the mountain!! Although the Canadians said it didn’t really count as ‘snowing’ but I loved it anyway.

At the top we found this really cool spot which was basically one giant cliff. It was here that we decided it would be a great idea to jump off rocks and do safe things like handstands and cartwheels. Clara is a medical student and before we did our handstand she said “As a medical student I do not support this, but as a friend I say go for it”. We ended up repeating that statement for everything the rest of the hike. Oh, and when Flo tried to do a cartwheel he ripped his pants hahahhahaaha

Also it is important to note it was WINDY up there:

On the way down from the hike we found a mini pond which we decided to put our faces into in order to get eternal youth and beauty (just like the one from Isle of Skye).

We reached the end of the hike around 6:30 pm, at which point Flo decided he wanted to go into Loch Lomond (actually he had been trying to convince us to do it the whole hike but none of us wanted to join him and honestly I figured that it would be so cold he would chicken out). But he did not chicken out and instead I ended up joining him, which led to this amazing video. My guess is that the water was probably close to 5 degrees (Celsius) and it was SO WINDY. You can see in the video that as soon as I dunked myself I WAS OUT OF THERE. Flo however thought it would be fun to play in the water for a bit and you can hear Kate and Clara in the background of the video yelling at him to get out so he didn’t get pneumonia.

…and then KATE AND CLARA LOCKED US OUT OF RGE CAR AND I ALMOST FROZE TO DEATH (I joke, but really it was cold).

Overall, GREAT HIKE. Would recommend it to anyone that goes to Scotland because its just challenging enough that you feel proud upon finishing it, but its not horrible, meaning you actually CAN finish it without killing yourself. And if you are lucky enough to climb it on a sunny day (like we did) then I promise you are in for a real treat. I would also recomend hiking the Cairngorms if you have the chance.

Oh… but the day did not end there… that night Flo and Kate had created a massive Scavenger Hunt for our friends which took us all over the city and lasted from 10pm Friday night to 3pm Saturday (which means we were up ALLLLLLL NIGHT completing challenges). For those who know what Questival is, this was basically that but this one was created by friends for friends (Btw I did a Questival in SF last year and those are great photos too so feel free to check them out on my FB). So it was much more personalized which made it even more fun. Anyways, that is for my next post so get excited 😛