100 Mile Challenge – The Result…….

The last 30 days has, at times, felt like one of the Top Gear challenges. It starts off all light hearted and jaunty but as it progresses it becomes more serious and the closer you get to the finish you realise the closer the finish is going to be!

Except that my challenge didn’t have any jaw dropping scenery, nor did it come with a tension building soundtrack and there certainly wasn’t any V12 supercharged sports cars to eat up the mileage!

I always knew it was going to be tough and to be honest if I’d realised just how hard it was going to be I probably wouldn’t have started it in the first place. But then that would have somewhat missed the point.

I’ve learnt a lot about myself, physically I’m much stronger than I would have believed and my recent trip to the Lake District really highlighted how well this improved fitness translates into time on the hill.

But perhaps more importantly I have discovered new depths to my emotional reserves, a desire to keep going when everything else is crying out for me to stop.  Never was this more apparent than in the last few days when it has felt that even the elements have been against me!

Over the last month I have taken a little over 17 hours to complete 19 runs.

I have used an estimated 16,000 calories and spent almost 5 hours stretching.

My average speed has been just under 9.5 km per hour.

And throughout the month at no point has the percentage of distance completed exceeded the percentage of time elapsed………

Until tonight.

100.93 miles of 100 completed (£60.56 raised).

November 100 mile challenge………..DONE!

The Early Bird Catches the Worm (Apparently)……….

The summit day on Kilimanjaro starts at midnight.  OK, so the sharp minded amongst you are probably thinking “but doesn’t every day start at midnight?” 

What I mean is that on Kilimanjaro you start WALKING at midnight, Mount Meru is far more civilised, allowing you to lie in until 2am before you lace up your boots and start the long push for the summit.

So in some dark corner of my mind it made sense that on my final day in the Lake District I got up nice (?) and early (5:30am) and walked a couple of hours in the dark hopefully getting somewhere high where, camera in hand, I could witness the most spectacular of sunrises!

Given that I would still have a six hour drive ahead of me I’d planned a short(ish) route that would take me up to White Side and along to Raise where I would then have the option of heading back along Sticks Pass or continuing to Stybarrow Dodd and Sheffield Pike.

 White Side (left) and Raise (centre)

You can just about make out the path I followed zigzagging  it’s way up Raise before cutting across to Whiteside

At the risk of making another obvious statement, walking in the dark is odd! 

Your entire world consists the circle of light thrown out from your headtorch, and even this is an unnatural “half light” flattening textures and making it difficult to anticipate the bumps and dips on the track.

There’s no sense of the ground covered or the distance left to go and with almost no peripheral vision it’s all too easy to pass within feet of key landmarks (such as the cairn at the top of White Side) without spotting them.

The fog thickened as dawn approached and it was obvious that I wasn’t going to get the sunrise I had hoped for so after a very quick self portrait at the top of raise I headed for Sticks Pass content in the knowledge that I would have the drive home to recollect what a fantastic weekend it had been.

 Darkness, fog and Simong at the top of Raise

Camping Barns and Intruder Alarms……….

I’d never stayed in a Camping Barn before but I had struggled to find Campsites that were open this late in the year and its location between Helvellyn and High Street made the Swirral Barn an obvious choice.

 Swirral Camping Barn

The barn is part of a complex of buildings which include a YMCA and a few other club huts centred around an old lead mine and despite having eight beds I had it to myself for most of my stay all for the princely sum of £8 a night!

 Swirral Camping Barn is the taller building on the second level

Claire seems to have this bizarre notion that whenever I go away I am going to get hacked to pieces in my tent by some fell walking maniac whereas I work on the basis that most psychopaths are actually rather compulsive and therefore not likely to wander into the middle nowhere on the off chance that they’ll stumble across a random victim!

But you can never be too sure and given that the barn is only secured by a keypad, which as best as I can tell the code has been given to anyone who has ever stayed there (psychopaths included), I fashioned a rather sophisticated intruder alarm out of an empty beer bottle and slept like a baby!

 I’m seriously considering taking this onto Dragons Den

“Hello, my name is Simon and I’m after £100,000 for a 0.01% share in my home security company”

Above the clouds……..

For all the walking I have done over the last few years I had yet to witness a really good cloud inversion.  There have been moments when I’ve been close and seen a wave of cloud pour over a ridgeline or seen a distant peak poking through a blanket of white but these have always seemed to hint at something more spectacular.

I’d planned a decent walk centred around High Street which is a prominent part of a Roman Road that traversed much of this part of the Lake District and provided plenty of opportunity to extend or shorten the day depending on the conditions (and just how masochistic I felt like being).

 A quick photo op before heading up to High Street.

Whilst the walk along Striding Edge had been fantastic much of the previous day had been spent walking in fog, and without access to any weather forecasts I had no reason to expect anything different today.  

However by the time I had reached my first top of the day it was clear that I was in for something special.  All around me there were peaks and ridges rising through valleys full of cloud and in the distance I could even pick out most yesterdays walk.

 Helvellyn, Striding Edge & Catstye Cam rising above the cloud.

With such spectacular conditions it made sense to make the most of the opportunity and tick of a few more Wainwrights (The Knott, Rampsgill Head, High Raise, Kidsty Pike, Mardale Ill Bell, Thornthwaite Crag & Gray Crag) however with daylight running out and conditions deteriorating, the sensible decision was to descend at Threshthwaite Cove rather than try to squeeze in the last two I had in mind (Stony Cove Pike & Hartsop Dodd).

 The walk out along Pasture Beck.

Helvellyn & Striding Edge……..

There are some routes in the mountains whose reputation lend them an almost mythical quality, they are the rockstars of hillwalking and they have the ability to attract and repel walkers in almost equal measure.

The legend grows as their names are casually dropped into conversation with other walkers you meet who are more than happy to share their tales of how they witnessed someone (but never themselves) stuck “Crag Fast” halfway down the route, unable to continue and unable to retreat.

In your own mind you like to visualise your own attempt like a movie, complete with perfect weather and glorious views,  almost skipping  along, picking out the tiniest of footholds with confidence and ease.

  

The view from Catstye Cam:  Red Tarn with Striding Edge behind, Helvellyn rising up into the cloud on the left.

 OK, so that may all sound like a load of grandiose twaddle but for me Helvellyn and StridingEdge was something more than a “normal” day out. 

Starting with a long steady climb across  Patterdale Common until you reach Grisedale Brow.  By this point most of the days climbing is behind you but there is still a sense of nervous anticipation as you follow the drystone wall waiting for your first glimpse of Striding Edge.

The view from Patterdale Common.

You take a few minutes upon arrival, watching those beginning their attempts, tentatively picking out their route across the very highest points of the ridge.  Others make a tactical withdrawal, the wind and the fog making the option to follow the track 20 yards beneath their colleagues too hard to resist.

The conditions demand respect as you take your time, choosing each step with care, often pausing to allow the gusting wind to drop before making your next. 

Every now and again the “low” path crosses your route and you grab a minutes respite before scrambling back up to the ridge.  Then just as you where starting to enjoy yourself you find yourself at the end, faced with the final steep climb to the summit.  

There will be no views from the top today but that doesn’t matter you can wander about with a smile on your face, relieving the experience and happy in the knowledge that there is a well earned beer waiting for you when you get down.