Weather/Conditions: Cool day, the sun was out, sky was blue, barely a cloud in sight. Conditions could barely get any more perfect than this!
Distance/Ascent/Time: 3km / 370m / 3h
Accompanying: Uncle Sandy, Tom and Alex

Considering I'm writing this nearly six months after it happened, I don't really remember all the exact details of it. Nevertheless, I do remember a significant amount and it's interesting that this is the first hillwalk in nearly two years. For some reason things went quiet during 2006 and I don't quite know why but it was a time that I was beyond desperate to do climbing, but never did. Maybe things never started working out until mid 2007, when I began meeting more people (most notably, Alex) who were all up for climbing mountains. My substitute for climbing great mountains were trips out to the Campsies, and I'd spend an hour or so away in the winter evenings. On those old trips to the Campsies, I never climbed to a summit as such - just went for walks, maybe following a waterfall or some ridge. These were amazing days out, but I always wanted to get to the bigger hills. So when the opportunity to spend the day on this hill came up, I had to go. It'd seem that this day up Ben A'an was the first time in a long time I've visited any kind of summit, and what a day. The weather was just perfect.



It was either that morning or the night before that Uncle Sandy phoned to say he, Tom and Alex we going up Ben A'an. They picked me up in the morning or early afternoon and we drove there. It was an amazing day, I was quite awed at the conditions - real deep blue skies and not a cloud around. We arrived at the bottom of A'an and left the car. The path wound through a forest and we walked upwards with sun filtering through trees, and maybe the occasional creak of wood. It's times like these where I seem to have heightened sense of the world around about and I would notice the small things. It's odd to explain but if you've found this feeling yourself, I'm sure you know what I mean.

We eventually walked out of the forest and began climbing the steeper slopes. I can't really say a lot other than the views were great and and path up gave a good stroll but I headed on beyond the others and walked up, around the back and to the top on my own. Everyone else followed soon after and I wasn't short of company at the top. We ate lunch up there and the views along to The Cobbler and the many other mountains were incredible. It was so clear! There was barely a bit of haze in the air...

We spent a long time up there, and had some scrambling on the crags. We left the summit and it was a very enjoyable descent through the forest back to the car. I didn't know when I would get back out to the mountains, but as things would turn out, I ended up on The Cobblers summit a month later. The ball had begun rolling, and it hasn't stopped since. That's something I'm damn glad of.