Ben Nevis the summit only to find "fragments of earthen and glass ware, chicken bones, corks, and bits of paper". It was not until 1847 that Ben Nevis was confirmed by the Ordnance Survey as the highest mountain in Britain and Ireland, ahead of its rival Ben Macdhui. The summit observatory was built in the summer of 1883, and would remain in operation for 21 years. The first path to the summit was built at the same time as the observatory and was designed to allow ponies to carry up supplies, with a maximum gradient of one in five. The opening of
Ben Nevis carried the name since then. A mountain in Svalbard is also named Ben Nevis, after the Scottish peak. It is 922 metres high, and is south of the head of Raudfjorden, Albert I Land, in the northwestern part of the island of Spitsbergen. A comic strip character, Wee Ben Nevis, about a Scottish Highlands boarding school student with superhuman strength and his antics were featured in the British comic "The Beano" from 1974 to 1977, was named after the mountain. Hung Fa Chai, a 489-metre hill in Northeast New Territories of Hong Kong was marked as Ben Nevis on historical