“Friday 6th July I depart Chester to get on the train to Stoke on Trent where I await the arrival of Sara, Sarah, Ni and Rach. Unfortunately due to a slight hitch with regards to receiving the wrong car, I wasn’t picked up at the estimated time of 7 but 8.40pm. This then changed the plan around slightly. The original plan was to head up north to stay with Marie in Oban and get up early to drive to Fort William in the morning. Although due to a much later arrival up north we took a sensible option, or what seemed like the more sensible option at the time, to stay and sleep in the car at Ben Nevis car park.
Freshened up and packed we set off on our first mountain, Ben Nevis.
We had all prepared ourselves well with plenty of layers after seeing the forecast over the past weeks, however to our delight it turned out beautiful and within30mins of walking we had all built up a sweat and had to take off the layers. It was a long but pleasant walk and despite having had minimal sleep we all felt good and managed to reach the top with no problems.
Arriving back at base, Ni and Rach had set out clean clothes and a fabulous picnic to eat. Without much delay we had a quick sort out and got back on the road to head to Scafell.
Along route we hit a diversion sign, which set us back a little, we then got stuck down a very narrow road where busses were trying to get down but couldn’t, so we ended up having a two hour set back for our challenge. The original time of arrival would have meant we would have almost completed the second mountain in the light, however due to the hiccup we had, we didn’t arrive till just before 10pm and therefore it was just starting to get dark.
I was exited for the adventure and experience of climbing a mountain in the dark. We managed to reach the top in good time at 12.10am and back down for 2.30 to then head on to Snowdon.
Arriving at Snowdon at 6.55am knowing it took roughly 2hrs to get up to the top was a bit worrying for us all, however we were determined not to let that get to us and push ourselves every step of the way to gain this time. Power walking up the track seemed like no time at all, and then reaching the rocks which were to be scrambled up seemed like a daunting task at first. Once we made progress up the rocks, time was ticking away fast, but we were doing really well. Sarah was struggling at this point and so Sara being the awesome motivator, pushed her to the very top, meanwhile I gained some surprising energy from somewhere and started running with 23minutes to go and passing a group who told me it was roughly 20miuntes to the top, I couldn’t risk walking. I ploughed through managing to reach the top by 8.52am.
It was an incredible experience and I loved every minute.”
Zoe Storr
