14th – 15th July 2007
The Three Peaks Challenge involves walking and climbing the three highest peaks in Britain. The three peaks are, Ben Nevis in Scotland, Scafell Pike in England and Mount Snowdon in Wales.
The challenge is to climb the three peaks in a time of under 24 hours. The time starts at the base of Ben Nevis in Scotland and finishes at the base of Snowden in Wales; the time also includes the travel time between the three peaks.
The challenge was taken on for two reasons. Firstly it is a challenge we have fancied doing for a while now, and secondly it would give us the opportunity to raise some vital funds for CRY.
The reason we chose the charity was because a work colleague and friend, John Ber – who is a press shop supervisor – had lost his 17-year-old daughter Kasia Ber a year ago to the condition Long QT.
The sudden noise of her phone alarm caused her heart to go in to an abnormal rhythm, causing her death.
The team of Dave Foster (die maintenance team leader), Paul Lutz (die maintenance supervisor), Martin Alexander (die maintenance technician) and Alan Summerson (die maintenance manager) travelled up to Scotland on Friday 13th July and stopped the night in a log cabin to allow an early start on Saturday morning.
After a high protein breakfast of sausages, bacon, eggs and beans we arrived at the start point of Ben Nevis at around 10.00am on Saturday 14th July. The weather was wet and misty, but the thought of climbing the three mountains with very little or no sleep in between meant that the weather was the least of our worries.
We started the challenge at 10.25am and started to climb the path leading up to Ben Nevis.
We were surprised at the amount of people on the mountain path and found out later that there were other people also attempting the Three Peaks Challenge.
Ben Nevis was our first climb so we decided to climb as quickly as possible to make up extra time in case we met with problems while driving to the next mountain.
We reached the top of Ben Nevis in a very good time and quickly took photographs of ourselves and the snow (yes, snow in July). We set off back down (mostly running where we could) and returned to the car in a time of 3 hours 50 minutes. This was a very good time as the average time to climb the mountain is around 5 and a half hours.
We left Ben Nevis, very pleased with our performance and knowing that a good travel time to the next mountain would give us an excellent chance of achieving our target of under 22 hours.
We arrived at the second mountain at around 8.00pm after a very good trouble free drive down (always staying within the speed limits of course). We had previously climbed Scafell Pike as part of our training for the challenge, so we knew that a good time would be around the 3-hour mark.
We set off up the path in daylight knowing that we had to make good time to avoid descending the mountain in the dark. We reached the top in just under 2 hours and once again took our photographs. The top of Scafell was also very wet and misty, but no snow. As we set off back down it started to become darker so we had to use our head torches.
On the way back down, due to the track being difficult to follow and the darkness, we lost our way and ended up leaving the correct path! Luckily we noticed some other climbers in the distance and managed to find the correct path again.
This slight detour cost us about 5 minutes in lost time so no real damage was done. We arrived back at the car in a time of 3 hours 10 minutes, so once again we had made very good time.
We decided to take 20 minutes to boil some water and have a hot cup of tea before departing to Wales, and our final climb up Snowdon.
We departed Scafel Pike at around 11.45pm and set off to Wales. By this time Alan and myself were starting to feel tired due to no sleep. Paul and Martin were both fast asleep in the back with their teddy bears and their arms around each other.
For safety reasons we decided to stop off on route to Snowdon to take a small rest and have a cup of coffee. The stop off cost us 30 minutes, but we felt that it was necessary. We also felt that we would be more than capable of still achieving a total time of under 22 hours.
We arrived at the base of Snowdon at around 4.15am and were pleased to find that the weather was pleasant. We decided to take one of the more difficult paths up to the summit as it looked shorter in distance on the map than the other 2 routes. The path may have been shorter in distance but it made up for that by being steeper, with large bolder type steps to climb up.
We reached the top in another good time and once again took our photographs. At this stage we knew we had over 4 hours of time left to get back to the car to achieve a time of under 24 hours.
We decided that we would take a different route back which meant descending a steeper path – but it would leave us with an easier route back to the car where we could afford to jog (if our legs would allow that) and aim to achieve an even better time than our initial goal of under 22 hours.
We arrived back at the car at 7.40am after a final sprint, to get a time of 21 hours and 15 minutes. This was well within the 24-hour challenge time and well under our target time of 22 hours.
A bottle of champagne or cans of larger would have been nice at the time to celebrate our achievement, but a hot cup of tea and a bacon sandwich more that made up for it!
As well as a wonderful feeling of achievement at completing the challenge, we have also managed to raise £900 for CRY.
