3 Peaks: Rory’s Account

Like all good ideas; this one was born in the pub, sort-of. In all honesty I’d wanted to do the three peaks challenge for years but I’d never found a good excuse to rope anyone else into it. So when we needed some method of fundraising it seemed like the perfect opportunity to combine doing some good with a fun challenge.

I’ve never mentioned this to the other lads but I was always very confident in our success. We’re all young guys in good shape and I thought we’d prepared very well. The way I saw it the only potential hazards were the weather and traffic which were totally out of our control.

Cue Ben Nevis and other than some keen wind and rain at the peak where I had to quickly throw some extra layers on to avoid hypothermia, we completed the stage at an easy pace in good time.

Following that we mademore good time down the M74 and M6, which was the only part of the route which threatened serious traffic. Personally, confidence was sky high. That is until a voice piped up from the back:

“Did you put the postcode for the car park in the satnav?”

Referring to Wasdale Head car park which represented the beginning of our route up Scafell Pike;

“No, I just put Scafell Pike in.”

Replied the bumbling idiot who was in charge of the satnav (read: me).

I had thought surely that command would get us to the right area and we could just narrow it down later. As it turns out we had taken the wrong exit off the M6, were on the wrong side of the mountain and had added, to my horror, over an hour to our journey time.

My previous confidence turned to ash in my mouth. Timings for the three peaks are pretty tight as is, to add an extra hour of driving is disastrous. Facing not only personal failure but also the guilt of being responsible for the other lads failing when they’d all put so much effort, time and money into it, I was despondent.

But in what could maybe be viewed as a microcosm of life, I had to decide very quickly whether to let the despair win and give up, or put on a brave face and keep going.

“We can still do this.”

I declared to the other lads. I don’t know if they believed me. I certainly didn’t.

Josh had to channel his inner Colin McRae to shave minutes off the journey time on Cumbria’s narrow, windy roads and our pit stops now had the urgency of a Red Bull team, if not quite the efficiency. I silently cursed the seconds we’d casually thrown away at the foot of Ben Nevis.

The thing about mountain hiking is the relationship between speed and effort is not linear, it’s exponential. And the thing about Scafell Pike is although it’s the shortest mountain in terms of elevation, and the shortest route in terms of walking distance, it’s by far the steepest of the three. I think had we known what we were in for we wouldn’t have attacked the climb like we did, but we were short on time so we pushed hard.

It speaks to the mental and physical strength of the other guys, that even tired and stressed, as we crested one ridge only to be faced with yet another steeper climb to the next one; none of them complained or whinged or even mentioned my silly mistake as they would’ve

 been in their rights to do. Instead we stuck it out as a team and pushed on as fast as we could even though we were all feeling the pace.

It wasn’t an easy path to the summit either. About two thirds of the way up we came across a fork in the path and went right. Typically of course, the correct path was the left one. After a while the path we chose just sort of ended and we had to make it up ourselves from there. So we scrambled up some steep rocks. Then climbed, as in literally with hands and feet, up this narrow gorge, dodging falling rocks the whole way, until we reached the brow. From there in howling wind, rain and heavy fog, by some miracle, we found the peak with no path to follow. We took the left path down, it was much easier.

I don’t know exactly what time we did Scafell in but it was very fast. Snowdon was home territory for me and I knew if I could just put my foot down on the drive, we’d have the easiest climb of the day ahead of us and I felt some real hope coming back.

Unfortunately we’d overlooked one thing. We were low on fuel and it was late. On top of that to get to a fuel station our route was almost perfectly designed to be as fuel inefficient as possible. Windy, hilly, narrow roads in heavy rain and fog meant a lot of driving in low gears and we hit the red long before we got on an A-road, never mind to a fuel station.

Then in one of those bizarre moments in life that feels like it couldn’t have been scripted better; after limping into the first open fuel station we found, with promises from google it would be open for another half hour; just as I put the nozzle in the tank, the attendant shut everything off. Under questioning he offered a sympathetic

“Sorry, we’re closed.”

Luckily with about 5 miles left in the tank we then managed to find (maybe) the only 24 hour fuel station in the lake district.

So after that emotional whirlwind it was on to the home stretch, to Snowdon. Given we lost even more time looking for fuel, speed was imperative. I had quite a lot of fun pelting it down A66 and M6 although I’ve later learned Cumbria police weren’t too happy about it. Driving down empty straight roads in the dark while the others slept was quite zen-like. They did kindly check in on me every now and again but to be quite honest I enjoyed this part.

By the time we got to the base of Snowdon I was fairly confident again after the time we’d made up. As token North Welshman of the group I’d elected myself guide to climb Snowdon in the dark, and did a pretty good job too; only getting lost once.

But the closer to the summit we got, the weaker I felt. For the purpose of saving time, as driver, I hadn’t eaten since before Scafell. As we were coming up to the summit I was struggling more and more and about 50m from the peak I had to let the others go on without me. I’ve had low blood sugar before on hikes but never this bad. I had coloured spots flashing in my eyes, my legs wouldn’t obey my brain telling them to move and even though I was only 50m out I was convinced I’d collapse before I reached the peak. It was the kind of moment that lays bare the realities of survival in a way we rarely get to experience in our civilised lives. If I was slightly less prepared and somewhere slightly wilder on my own, that would be death.

Luckily though, it’s Snowdon so there were plenty of people around. Some KitKats and a handful of Morgan’s jelly beans later and I was good to go. We summited, then descended at an

 easy pace and completed the challenge with I’m told around a quarter of an hour to spare. Given everything we faced, not a bad accomplishment.

Often when I told someone about this challenge I was met with doubt or confusion. The most common responses were along the lines of:

“Why would you want to do that?” or “Is that even possible?”

The truth is, it wasn’t just possible, it was easy. I know that’s rich coming from someone who did it with a quarter of an hour to spare. But we did it in terrible conditions and with pointlessly adding an extra hour to our driving time.

What it has proven to me is that because we live such comfortable, civilised lives in this country we have no real idea what we’re capable of. I’m not knocking being comfortable, I’m currently enjoying writing this in my nice warm house with a hot mug of tea. But because we rarely take on big physical challenges we don’t realise just how much we’re built for it.

I didn’t come out of this challenge with some huge feeling of accomplishment but rather an excitement that I think I could do even more. It’s opened my eyes to doing challenges greater than the three peaks in the future because I now know I’m capable of it; and I only know that thanks to putting myself under a physical stress you won’t find in everyday life anymore.

The challenge also left me with a deep gratitude that we had comfort to go back to. We’re lucky enough that we can go out and lightly brush shoulders with the realities of survival and call it a fun weekend. This challenge was of course in the name of helping a community where those realities are closer to a part of everyday life. So I want to thank everyone who supported all three of us who are going out to Uganda this weekend and I hope we can make a real impact when we go out there and hopefully bring some valuable perspective home with us.

Rory Daly.