Ben Nevis

A conservation charity has put its foot down over plans to take a vintage car to the top of Britain’s highest mountain.

Organisers of a Fort William classic-car rally had hoped to airlift a Model-T Ford to the summit of Ben Nevis to commemorate the 1911 ascent by Henry Alexander in a similar car. But the John Muir Trust, owners of the mountain, have given the project the thumbs-down.

The trust said the venture, taking the car by helicopter to the summit plateau, would be against the principles of the JMT in protecting wild areas and might be seen as setting a precedent for similar activities.

The car in question belongs to Iain Blyth, owner of an all-terrain vehicle business at Kinlocheil in Lochaber.

Alexander’s stunt, in which he drove the car up the specially adapted Pony Track, took five days to achieve, and three weeks of preparation laying timber on the path. It was meant to demonstrate the reliability of the Model-T.

The Ben attracts oddities: in 2006, the remains of a piano were unearthed from a cairn and in June last year, JMT volunteers found a wheelchair buried on the zig-zags leading to the summit plateau of the 1,344m (4,409ft) mountain.

The Trust took over stewardship of a large part of Ben Nevis, including its summit, in 2000.