THREE PEAKS CHALLENGE 5-6 JULY 2008

After a long wait with plenty of training, we finally completed the Three Peaks 24hour Challenge. 12 of us headed up to Fort William on Friday 4 July and stayed at the Ben Nevis Inn Bunk House, which is situated at the base of Ben Nevis. The weather was lovely and the view of the mountain spectacular. The food in the Ben Nevis Inn was fantastic – I certainly recommend the Ben Nevis Burger with salad.

After a long night (the bunk house has people coming and going at all hours), we started the challenge at 8am Saturday morning. Again, the weather was great and we completed the ascent and descent of Ben Nevis in 4 hours 40mins.

We programmed the tomtom for Wasdale head in the Lake District and enjoyed a few sing-a-longs. Andy made a compilation CD containing everyone’s favourite hits. This ranged from Queen to Abba! With only one quick service stop, we arrived at the base of Scafell Pike for 7.35pm. At this stage we were about an hour behind our original schedule and took the decision to cancel all the remaining pit stops and set off the minute the last climber reached the bus. We reckoned we could get back on track if we could make time savings.

Scafell Pike was extremely tough. The rain poured down within our first 15 minutes and we all got drenched. But spirits were high and we pushed on for the top. The ascent took approx 1hour 45mins, which was really pleasing considering the bad conditions. The descent was rather more tricky. The rain had made the rocks wet and slippy. Furthermore, by 10pm it was pitch black. The last walkers wer back in the bus by 11.10pm and we set off immediately for Mount Snowdon. A total time of 3hours 35mins.

The drive to Mount Snowdon was much quieter. We were all starting to feel the aches, pains and tiredness. With no stops we reached Pen-y-pass car park at 4am exactly. We gingerly poured out of the bus into the dark car park and took the ‘miners track’ route up Mount Snowdon. Everyone found the scree climb particularly hard due to muscle abuse and 20hours without sleep. But with persistence and very little talking, we reached the summit for 6am. For the first time, we realised that the 24 hour goal was well within our reach. With a lot more enthusiasm, we took the same route back down to the base of Snowdon, arriving to our drivers smiling face and a warm hand shake. Time on the clock 7.40am (TOTAL TIME 23HOURS 40MINS).

After a quick change out of our wet clothes, we enjoyed a lovely cuppa at the Snowdon base café and some of us even managed to polish off a full cooked breakfast.

All in all, it’s been a fantastic event. The limbs are now aching like mad, and we’re all walking like c3po from Star Wars. But it’s a proud achievement for us all, and something to look back on forever.

A special thanks goes to our dedicated driver Matt. He was fantastic – driving all the routes, getting us to our destinations safely. He also bought sandwiches and drinks whilst we were climbing, therefore saving valuable time and keeping us all well fed and motivated. Having a good driver is the most valuable asset for the whole event.

Wonder what event we’ll try next year……………………..probably something with less walking and more beer!
Jon

Ben Nevis 4hours 45mins
Scafell Pike 3hours 35mins
Snowdon 3hours 40mins

Total distance on foot 22.8miles




Chosen Charity


Following the consideration of many worthy causes, the group members have decided upon The Bobby Moore Fund as our chosen charity. In 1993, Stephanie Moore MBE established 'The Bobby Moore Fund' in partnership with Cancer Research UK, in memory of her late husband Bobby Moore OBE. Bobby, who will always be remembered for captaining England to World Cup glory in 1966, tragically died of bowel cancer aged just 51.

Bowel cancer is the second largest cause of cancer death in the UK, after lung cancer. Almost 100 people in this country are diagnosed with bowel cancer and 45 die from the disease every day.

In return for either enjoying seeing us succeed in our challenge, or if it floats your boat, watching us suffer, we have set up a very simple way for you to donate to The Bobby Moore Fund. At the top of the blog there is a link that will take you directly to the Justgiving website where you can donate as much, or as little as you like.

We have set ourselves a fundraising target of £2000, but we would like to raise much more. So, please dig deep and give as much as you can!

Mountain locations and accommodation


View Larger Map

Walking Routes

After a bit of discussion about the various routes that we have seen on other websites and those contained in Brian Smailes' book, we have now sorted out an important part of our preparation.

Ian B has spent time plotting the waypoints into GPS software so that we have a record of the routes that we plan to follow for each mountain. If you are interested in looking at the routes we are taking and the gradients we will be posting them on this site very soon.

If you are planning on carrying out the walk yourself, or would simply like a copy of the routes that we will be following, you will also be able to download all three routes in one .pdf file from a link that will be available next week.

We will be trying out GPS for navigating the routes, but will still be getting some practice in using the trusty old compass just in case it goes pear shaped.

The target walking time for each mountain are as follows:

Ben Nevis - 5 hours

Scafell Pike (Wasdale) - 4 hours

Snowdon - 4 hours.

With the training that we plan to get done before the challenge, we are hoping that we should be able to shorten these target times. This might allow us to achieve a respectable time. With the necessary driving time between locations this is still going to be a tight schedule...


Friday, 16 May 2008

Scafell Pike training run


Sunday 11 May saw us all up at 5am in the morning!!! The roads were fairly clear, and we all arrived at the start for 10am.

Scafell has two main routes to the top, and this training session was hopefully going to help us decide on the best approach for the challenge in July. One group ascended from Wasdale Head and the other from Seathwaite. The plan was to meet at the top and compare times.

The Wasdale approach took 1hr 45min to climb and 1hr 20mins to descend. However, the Seathwaite approach group took much much longer. They were 2hrs 40mins climbing and 2hrs 10mins descending (they got lost many times).

We still managed to meet at the top and have a group photo.

The weather was baking hot and made hard work of the task. I certainly drunk a full 2litre bladder of water!

Having looked at the seathwaite groups pace and recalculating the correct path, we’ve been able to calculate which approach will be best on the day. The options are as follows:

Climb and descend from Seathwaite
Climb from Seathwaite and descend to awaiting bus at Wasdale
Climb and descend from Wasdale

Looking at the driving times on our SatNav, the time saved climbing Wasdale is outweighed by the extra journey time on the mini bus. We seem to get the same times for the overall challenge whichever approach we use.

The safest option may be to climb and descend from Seathwaite – this is nearer the M6 and has less likelihood of meeting slow moving traffic in the Lakes. I’m sure as a group we’ll change this plan later though!!
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