What Happened When We Attempted The Three Peaks Challenge

If you have kept up with my training blogs or you follow me on social media, you’ll be aware that we planned to climb The Three Peaks of the UK in July to raise money for Men’s Mental Health. Well, it is now September, and I think I have just about recovered enough both physically and mentally to bring you the story of our adventure. And no, unfortunately, it wasn’t all plain sailing.

Scotland

**The Team – Emma, Rob (my husband), Jen (my sister), Emily, Rich, Robyn and Ben (our driver)**

We started our journey up to Scotland on 29th July, taking a short flight to Glasgow, where we then hired our (prebooked) minivan. From here we made our way to our lovely hotel on Loch Linnhe, where we enjoyed an evening meal, got to know one another better (my sister arranged the group so they were all people she knew, but we’d all only met once before) and took a stroll along the beach before getting a good night’s sleep in preparation for the big day.

The next day was all about fuelling up, checking our gear, resting and getting to the first mountain in plenty of time to begin our climb at 5pm. Everything was going smoothly, from our timings and planning to having all we needed… Until we arrived to find the Ben Nevis visitor centre was shut, as were all but one toilet! You can imagine the size of the queue as people came down from the mountain needing a wee! After a long wait, we all got in, had our anxious wees, filled our water bottles and were ready to go – Time Check 5:45pm.

Of course, just as we set off, the weather changed. The lovely dry day with sunny spells suddenly turned drizzly. Nevertheless, we began our trek both positive and determined.

Having completed The Three Peaks twice before, Rob, knew the route and he knew what to expect even with a bit of drizzle… But nothing coud have prepared any of us for what was about to happen.

The climb all started out well. Yes, it was tough – I had no idea how many rocks and steps I’d have to go over, and the size of some really did push my legs (probably should have done a bit more research there!) Plus, we found ourselves against a tide of people coming down, but we made good time at first and quite quickly found ourselves on an easier track. By 7:40pm we’d hit the halfway point – the waterfall crossing. The Three Peaks website states that you ideally need to do Ben Nevis in 5 hours so we felt that this was still possible at this stage, as the descent should be much faster.

As time went by and as we climbed higher, the on-and-off drizzle we’d been dealing with turned to rain and mist, and visibility just got worse and worse.

We pushed through, supporting one another, encouraging each other when we felt we couldn’t go on and joking that the mountain just felt never-ending. Honestly, with each turn you take up there, you think you’ve made it, but nope, just more rock formations and steep pathways. By this stage, we also encountered thicker mist and worsening weather.

Finally, at around 9:35pm we reached the summit. What should have been a 3 hour climb had taken 4 and due to this and the weather really looking as though it could cause us some serious issues, we didn’t hang around.

Realising that the weather had really drawn in, Rob quickly turned around and said we HAVE to get down now! And seeing his face, I knew this wasn’t anything like he had experienced in his previous climbs. We immediately upped our pace in the hope that we would not only make up time but also get out of the awful weather conditions, but everything started to become so much harder – we were battling rain, cold, wind and now darkness. Just writing this brings back all those horrible feelings, which is why I think this has taken me so long to document.

One thing I can say is that I am so grateful that we were all so prepared. We had plenty of snacks and water, we had torches (although I wish me and Rob had invested in head torches), we had waterproof coats and trousers, the right walking boots, plus walking poles, which, without, I think some nasty accidents would have occurred, if not worse…

As you can imagine, the terrain underfoot became treacherous. With each step, we had to try and work out how slippery the rocks were, the best footing and react quickly if we stumbled or slipped. I have never experienced anything like it, and I don’t think I could ever fully describe what this descent was truly like. All you want to do is get everybody down safely as fast as you can, but you can’t go fast because it’s too dangerous. You lose all sense of time due to the focus and the darkness, plus you are worried, determined, scared, focused, breath-holding and losing energy all whilst thinking, “I just want to be back at the van!”

I think every single one of us fell at some stage during the journey down Ben Nevis. I slipped 4 times, each one scared the crap out of me, but thankfully, because of the walking poles, I didn’t break anything or bang my head, and this was the same for most of us. I truly believe that our combined support and teamwork is the only thing that got us through this. We had a leader with a head torch at the front, lighting the way, showing the route and setting the pace. We then had another person at the back with a head torch, lighting the paths for those in the middle. We all gave words of encouragement and looked out for one another by shouting out instructions such as “slippery bit”, “watch out”, “go this way”, etc, to prevent accidents and in 2 cases, lives were actually saved. I’m not joking.

Rich had been up the front leading the way, but as he came around a bend and looked back at us, Jen noticed he’d inadvertently stepped too close to the edge. She shouted at him to move towards her and in doing so at that point she prevented what could have been a terrible ordeal. The other incident involved me. We had just hit the halfway point which is crossing the path of the water that comes down from a waterfall. As if it wasn’t wet enough underfoot already, we now had to use the stones in the stream to cross to the other side. I was almost across when I took a stumble, and even though I stuck my walking pole in, it got caught under a rock and bent away from me. My saviour came in the form of Emily who was right behind me. Without her quick reactions, well, I don’t even want to think about it. Luckily or weirdly (you decide), I had taken my sister’s backpack from her on the way up when she had started to struggle and I hadn’t given it back. This gave Emily something to grab hold of, and my word did she grab it?! She had hold of me before I knew what was happening, and she yanked me back to an upright position. I dread to think what would have happened if I hadn’t had the backpack on or if Emily didn’t have cat-like reflexes!

I would have to say that doing this challenge in a team is a must and doing it with a capable, fit and switched on team will save your life if it ever comes to it.

From here, everything in our bodies ached. The extra effort we had to put in to avoid slipping, to find our way and to stay focused was starting to take its toll, and naturally, legs and knees took the brunt. Mine and Rob’s in particular. We hurt. We really hurt. Every step down sent agonising pain into my knee – not on the bad leg either (you can read about that here) – and by around 11:30pm, I really wasn’t sure I could go on. Rob’s knee did the same – and he’s incredibly fit (I’m moderately fit) and as I said previously, he’s done this twice before! The weather had really made this climb and descent hard work. We did, of course, battle on; we couldn’t risk spending the night on the side of the mountain, not in the rain and cold, but our pace slowed right down, and by the time we arrived back at the van, it was around 1am. Ben Nevis had taken us 7 hours…

The timing was annoying, but the relief that we all got down safely with only minor injuries was immense.

We had no time to lose though, so it was a quick strip off and change into dry clothes, then back in the van to make the 6 hour drive to Scafell Pike.

The Lake District

Ben did a sterling job driving us to our next mountain which allowed us all to sleep, eat, drink and rest. After such an ordeal on Ben Nevis, we were all determined to make Scafell Pike a much better experience. However, me and Rob had hurt ourselves much more than we had realised. We got out of the van to test our knees and legs, and the outcome was, well, rubbish! I couldn’t weight-bear on my left leg and Rob was limping. We knew we couldn’t attempt this one. We were both absolutely gutted but it just wasn’t sensible to start the climb to either injure ourselves further or have to be rescued. Jen’s leg was also causing some twinges, but she said she would see how she got on and so 4 of the team set off.

All we could do was sleep and rest in the hope that our legs would recover for the next mountain – Snowdon.

I’m not quite sure how much time had passed by the time Jen came back. Her leg just couldn’t keep up with the others and instead of holding them up, she turned back to rest up. We all felt that the most important thing was that some of the team did the mountains in order to complete the challenge and raise the funds.

The three remaining team members did incredibly well and even though they said it was another very hard climb, they all got up and down safely by around 12:20 pm.

After some catching up and a bit of food and drink, it was time to head to Wales…

Yeah, That Didn’t Happen

Well, not immediately. We knew we were already behind schedule and we knew now that we couldn’t achieve the Three Peaks in 24 hours, but that wasn’t going to stop us from completing the last mountain. Nope, our determination couldn’t stop us… But the traffic could.

We were on a peninsula and the main way across was via a bridge that had been inadvertently closed for maintenance work. On top of that, a crash had taken place on the diversion road meaning we were completely stuck along with many, many more vehicles. We tried turning around and taking another route, other drivers went by telling us no. We went back to join the queue for the bridge but were quickly told it would be closed until at least 7pm. After walking up and down asking locals what our options were we found there was just one – to drive 150 miles up and around. At this news we decided to head to a pub, have a meal and talk through a plan of action.

We very quickly came to the decision to end the challenge. We figured out that we wouldn’t be at Snowdon until around 10pm maybe later, meaning we wouldn’t get to sleep, we would lose the money on our pre-booked hotel and we would have to come straight down and begin our drive back to London to return the mini van on time. It just wasn’t going to work.

Wales

Once we had eaten, rested, reflected, sat in disbelief at how the journey had panned out and chatted and laughed we made our long journey to Wales. It was indeed around 10pm when we arrived at our hotel and everybody was not only exhausted but also gutted that we couldn’t finish what we had started. We did consider getting up early and completing Snowdon in the morning, but we chose to be sensible, this wasn’t the right time for it. So, we had a good nights sleep, woke refreshed, had a large breakfast and packed up ready to hit the road again. Home.

Reflecting on our Adventure

Well, it wasn’t the outcome we had hoped for BUT looking back, there really was nothing more we could do and everything that went wrong really was out of our control. We were so unlucky with weather and traffic. However, on the positive side, everyone came home safe, nobody had long lasting injuries, we had great fun together, we saw the MOST beautiful scenery (I must visit Scotland again soon) and we raised over £2,000 for our charity.

Would I do it again? Do you know what? As mad as it sounds, I think I would attempt it again if the opportunity arose. I never thought I’d say that but I’d love to see how different it could all be especially with better weather! If not the whole challenge, I definitely want to travel back to the Lake District and Wales to get to the summits of Scafell Pike and Snowdon just so I can say “I did that”. I used to think that people who took on the Three Peaks were mad, but I can now totally see why so many give it a go. Sometimes repeatedly.

I want to end this journey with a huge thanks to all of you who donated, shared the story and supported us throughout our training as well as the challenge itself. It was a toughy and we couldn’t have made it all happen without you, so, thank you. And well done team! It was a blast… Til next time, eh?!

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