10 Peaks

Finally my 10 Peaks weekend arrived, and I spent Friday driving up and then registering in the Crossthwaite Centre in Keswick that was also the finish and that would see either my success or failure sometime early on Sunday morning.

I was booked in for the whole weekend at a pub close to the start and spent a while geting all my kit ready for the 4am start the next day:

  

Kit checked and ready. Blencathra from my bedroom window. 

I had my dinner in the bar, being joined briefly by Tom, who'd suggested this as a good place to stay. Map in hand, he took me through all the intricate short cuts and secrets of the 10 Peaks route that he had researched in countless trips up to the Lakes, while I tried not to be distracted by my sausage and mash and pint of Jennings.

Sometime in the hazy early hours of Saturday, and before my alarm went off, I awoke, excited and ready to go. I sneaked down the creaky stairs, met Tom in reception and then we were out trotting in the early morning gloom to the start.

After a brief talk and a queue to register our first 'dib' in the sensors, it was off on the long first climb up to Hellvellyn.



4am climb to the first peak

A few slower walkers had pushed to the front, but it was a good feeling to push on up the hill at a strong walking pace, passing a few of them and stopping once to add a layer when I realised my mistake in starting in a t-shirt.

On the summit it was misty and cold.

Peak 1 - Helvellyn

The mist nearly made me lose my nerve in taking the short cut off the top. Most people were following the tourist path, but I kept to my plan and ran down the grassy slopes of Whelpside Ghyll, getting the line slightly wrong and ending up with a very steep slope and then a climb, but I felt like at least I'd tried to be clever.

I rejoined the main path, jogged down to the first checkpoint on the valley floor at the end of Thirlmere, and then had the long boggy climb up Wythburn.

Wythburn Valley looking back to Helvellyn.

At the end of the valley, the extra peak of High Raise was the next place to dib. From here you should be able to have a view of the whole route, but the clouds were drifting around, making it atmospheric but not great for long distance vistas.

Leaving High Raise

By now the second peak was in sight, and a grassy descent followed by a cut across to Angle Tarn got me to the bottom of the descent. A large number of runners in front of me had disappeared at this point. I got excited about finishing positions at this point, but they all turned out to have taking an alternate route and arrived at the summit just before me anyway.

I overtook a runner on the climb up to Bowfell who was obviously unhappy. I knew exactly how he felt; at this point I was feeling good, but on a race this long there is an ebb and flow, and sure enough when I saw him later he'd perked up.

View to the Langdale Pikes from the climb to Bowfell 

Peak 2 - Bowfell

I reached the top of Bowfell at the same time as a couple of strangers. We said 'hi' and checked in then went off separately. More of them later though...

A rough run over Esk Pike and another check in on a peak that wasn't one of the 10, and it was down to my old friend Esk Hause, starting point of the climb to the Scafell Massif. After a brilliant piece of clumsiness with my electrolyte tables and water, I checked the time. It was just after 9am. I'd been going for 5 hours, whereas normally on a Saturday I'd only just have got up. More importantly though, I was well within the target time I'd mapped out the day before.

Climbing away from Esk Hause

Buoyed up by this I started off up Great End and quickly checked into the closely packed 3rd, 4th and 5th Peaks.

Peak 3 - Great End

Peak 4 - Ill Crag

Peak 5 - Broad Crag

It may seem a bit like cheating that the first two peaks take 4 hours to cover while these three are a stone's throw from each other, but a lot of stones have been thrown around here and it is hard going as I head on to Scafell Pike for the third time in 6 weeks for the literal but not metaphorical highpoint of the day. 



Peak 6 - Scafell Pike

By the time I get there it is very misty, but typically for me and my fragile self esteem, I don't want the many walkers up here to think I don't know where I'm going so I head off along the wrong path without checking map or compass. Embarrassingly the leader of one of the walking groups points me on the right path towards Scafell, but this turns out to be the turning point of the day. 
Back on the path to Mickedore, the huge gash between Scafell Pike and Scafell, I link up with Luc and Dave, two guys from Reading. This turns out to be very lucky for me on three points.

One, they were great company. I had wondered before the race how I would manage through low points if I were on my own as on the Fellsman and the Old County Tops I needed someone to help me through my weak patches. Selfish? Me?

Two, it turned out they had their own brilliant cheerleading team of friends and family who took me on board as if I were one of them. I hadn't really thought about what an anti-climax it would be to finish early on Sunday morning with just the marshals there. I didn't find out..

Three, and most importantly at this particular time, they knew the way up Lord's Rake.

On this race there are two options to get from Scafell Pike to Scafell. One is via Foxes' Tarn, which I had done before, but which is longer and less convenient for the rest of the route than Lord's Rake.

However, Lord's Rake is a narrow chasm full of scree with a finely balanced chock stone at the top.

Lord's Rake from the top

And once you get up that, there's a tricky downhill, and then another uphill scree slope.

Lord's Rake part 2. More scree

With Luc and Dave's guidance we found the rake and I actually enjoyed it; the concentration involved made the ascent seem less about actually trying to go uphill and more like trying to avoid injury. It was great and we were soon at Scafell.

Peak 7 - Scafell

Then it was back down Lord's Rake in reverse which was almost as exciting.

Scafell done.

We had a very brief discussion about whether to drop down to Wasdale and then attempt the ridiculously tough steep climb up to Pillar, or take the sensible option of the Corridor Route to climb Great Gable. I think this is how I may have phrased the choice at the time and unsurprisingly we soon set off contouring around the cliffs below Scafell Pike and then up to join the Corridor Route, the rocky path that connects Scafell Pike to Styhead Pass. There was a brief hiccup when I tried to take up on a short cut, but we just managed to avoid the fate of the runner we saw looking forlornly across at the correct path from the other side of the abyss of Pier Gill.

A long climb up Great Gable and we were at Peak 8. Again the top was misty, and a couple of degrees off the true bearing took us and all the people around us onto the shocking unstable scree that J and I had been on on our Wasdale recce.

Fantastic Wasdale view appearing out of the cloud

I finally managed to get across to a piece of scree with smaller stones and it was like a down escalator as I jumped down towards the third checkpoint at Beck Head.

The Beck Head checkpoint. So near, yet so far.

Off towards Pillar with Ennerdale behind.

We now had the tedious contouring round Kirk Fell before the climb up to peak number 9.

The view towards Yewbarrow from the route to Pillar. 

Peak 9 - Pillar

After checking in at Pillar we had to retrace our steps back down to Black Sail Pass, but at this point I actually tried to finally make a contribution to our group by pretending that Tom's clever route across Ennerdale to Honister was a personal idea. We dropped down to the valley, I crossed several streams more than I needed to, and after a long climb out of the end of Ennerdale we rejoined the race route, and seemed to have made up some places.

Up to now Luc had shown his obvious fitness, gained from running ultras in the south, and had had to spend large periods waiting for Dave and I, but at this point started to get pain in his knee which would start to slow him down as we went on.

Looking into Buttermere from the route to Honister

Into the Honister checkpoint and the team supporters were there (and had been waiting 4 hours) and were ready to cheer us up. After a refuelling session on chicken pasta, hot tea and Coke, and a chance for Luc to change into new socks AND shoes, we were off on the climb up towards Dalehead, forking off before the summit and following the path down into the Newlands Valley.

The start of the descent into Newlands

Looking back at the Newlands valley.

For various individual reasons we took it slowly on the rocky descent and then to long flat section back to checkpoint 5, which cruelly was also going to be the finish everal hours later. Hearing the news that Tom had won the race in record time gave me a boost as we set off for the final peak.

It was now late evening, but warm and light as we crawled slowly up Carl Side on our way to Skiddaw.



View back to Keswick from the ascent of Skiddaw.


The climb went on and on, first on a rocky winding path, then a ruler straight path heading up to Carlside Tarn. We had to put our headtorches on and started off on the next climb up to Skiddaw, but the conditions had suddenly changed entirely. The cold gales buffeted us as we trudged upwards, blinding us as it blew the clouds across our headtorch beams. Occasionally there would be a gap and the orange glow of the sunset would briefly appear. All that was missing were flashes of lightning and a soundtrack of Death Metal. Ahead of us, it was impossible to see if the shapes were a 100,000 foot mountain 100 miles away or the top we were waiting for.

Finally we reached the top and had a brief view of the trig point and headed off to it to get our final checkin. Heading back along the hell of the ridge we met a slightly scared solo runner (probably just reflecting back our expressions) who asked us to wait for him while he went to the summit. We huddled in a stone shelter, wondering what we'd do if he didn't reappear, then, when he did, set off shivering down the tourist path.

All we had left was the descent I had done in 40 minutes on a sunny July day two years ago when I ran the Skiddaw fell race. Today was different though and it took us two and a half hours to drop down to the lights of Keswick and back to the waiting supporters and the race team.

We got back in 21 hours and a half hours in joint 54th place. This was pretty irrelevant to me as all I had wanted to do was finish within the 24 hours limit and to enjoy the experience. Next year however....