Well, I thought my eyes were already wide open on this challenge, but the Bob Graham dress rehearsal proved to be yet another eye opener. Just as I was thinking I was getting on top of the beast it reared up and bit me again.
The weather was glorious. The sun scorched out of a clear blue sky, and it would have been a good day for sitting drinking a beer with your feet dangling in the river that runs next to the campsite in Wasdale. Instead we were going to spend all day on the high fells.
Bondy dropped me off at Dunmail Raise, and the plan was for me to run legs three and four of the BG, meeting Daft B at two points on the way so he could top up my fluids. It started very well. I navigated over the first nine mountains on memory alone. The map was never used. The previous reccie runs had served their purpose – even the aborted one with Rich.
But by the time I met Daft B at the first rendezvous two and a half hours later, I was very thirsty. (Amusingly, he was enjoying the views whilst sitting in a camp chair he had carried up the mountain) I was losing fluids much faster than anticipated, and spent a while refilling from his heavy stock.
Daft B waved me off again, and I set off up the silly side of Bow Fell. On the previous two ascents of this mountain it had savaged me and I had been forced to descend for safety. This time I was granted a welcoming (but still tough) passage, and was rewarded with perfect visibility for the climbs of a further six 900-metre high monsters of the Scafell Massif.
I had underestimated the difficulty of the terrain. At this height there was no vegetation. These beasts were huge lumps of rock. Underfoot conditions varied only in the sizes of the stones bruising your feet – from golf balls that you ski uncontrollably over to sofa size boulders that you have to leap between. Away from the few well-worn tracks the going was incredibly tough.
Barring one or two unremarkable incidents I eventually made it down to the campsite in Wasdale, very thirsty and suffering worsening leg cramps. In the previous five hours I had topped 15 mountains, including the highest few in England. But I was suffering dehydration, and was only a little over half way through the day. With more monster hills between me and Daft B, who was waiting on a distant mountain, we had a big problem.
I drank a litre and a half of water (it barely touched the sides), refilled my pack from supplies in the tent, and started out up Yewbarrow. The sun continued to blaze down, and I had sweated off my two coatings of sun cream. It wasn’t long before the worsening cramps and pounding headache made me realise I wasn’t going to make it………
Daft B continues……………
“Now that was the kind of day that's why we do the RTS stuff. Due to changing plans and deciding to try two legs in one day we were probably camped in the wrong place (however have a look at pictures for the Wasdale Head campsite and tell me that's the wrong location. Stunning views).
Having moved across from a biking event (pure bonkers madness) to the muletrain (providing water and food at various hill tops on the way around) my route plans had changed. No problem, give me a map and I'll get there. I set off just at 8.15am and all I had to do was meet RTS in two muletrain places:
- between Rossett Gill and Bowfell at middayish
- between Great Gable and Green Gable at 4.45ish.
We have to keep these times in mind as mobile reception is dodgy at best. I set off from the campsite, soon realising that the live test of carrying all the supplies was a bit of a shock. My pack probably weighed nearly 12 kilos rather than the usual 3. Still lighter than carrying a bike though!
Blue skies, blooming warm but just potter up the hills to the first muletrain point. I got there about 40 minutes early so could leisurely set up camp, get out the beer chair, apply suncream and take in the views. 11.45 RTS appears at the top of Rossett Pike and comes gambolling down to pick up supplies. RTS was heading off to Wasdale and I'd meet him at muletrain point 2 in five hours. Easy life……
…until I came to Windy Gap. That's the last hill before the checkpoint and it's a killer. It was baking hot and it probably took me an hour longer than I expected. I got to the top absolutely broken. I got a text from RTS saying he was "on Yewbarrow and really struggling" (what do you expect? it's the Bob Graham Round!). I got out the suncream and beer chair and sat down. The views in either direction were stunning so it wasn't like I would get bored over the next 2-3 hours. RTS was due at 4.45 at the latest which normally means he appears at least 30 minutes before then. 4.15 passed. I sent a "how you doing" text but got no reply. This is quite normal in the lakes as reception is dubious. 4.45 passed. 5.15 passed. 5.45 passed. Hmmm where's RTS? He could have bailed out, be off the mountain and not been able to get a message to me. Equally he could have taken a fall, be stuck on the mountain and not be able to get a message to me.
Start point of the support crew is to look back up the route RTS was coming from. Right, so I'm going up Great Gable to see if I can see him and get good reception on the mobile.
I set off up and bumped into a woman dressed as a fairy. I did wonder if I was hallucinating after a day in the sun. Turns out she was doing all the Wainwrights (hills featuring in A. Wainwright’s ‘pictorial guides’) as a charity event, and decided to dress as a fairy. Appears that's an outfit that's highly unsuitable for baking sun, howling winds and torrential rain…which had been the last 3 days weather, however she was determined to wear the outfit for the whole event. That's a commendable level of stupidity to which I doff my cap.
Not sure what the geological term is for the summit of Great gable but it's a bugger of a rocky scramble. I got to the top and rang RTS and Bondy (both calls went straight to answer phone) so I rang Mrs DaftB to ask if she could get a message to them. My next option was to backtrack along the RTS route. I bumped around the rocks trying to find the path down from Great Gable (I never found it). As I looked across to Kirk Fell I hit my lowest point as realised I had no chance of getting down into the valley and then getting back up to that fell…and if he wasn't there I'd have to do Pillar, Steeple, Red Pike, and Yewbarrow as well. So at what point do I call Mountain Rescue?
I probably only had 15 more minutes of musing (it felt like longer) when at 6.20, "PING…you have a voicemail". The message had come in at 5.05 and it was RTS saying he'd abandoned, hobbled off the mountain, and was ringing from the pub by the campsite (not that he was in the boozer, just that it's the only available landline in the valley).
An understatement to say there's good news indeed. RTS is OK, I still had my support crew badge (as crew must always be last on the mountain)…...apart from the fact that it's 6.30pm and I'm atop a 900m mountain. Hey ho. I rang Mrs DaftB (who was liking being mission control) and she had left messages in the pub, at the campsite and with Mrs RTS to say I was on my way down.
Just before 8pm we met up at the bottom. I was impressed as once it became less steep I'd jogged a lot of the way down, despite the heavy backpack with the char strapped to it. RTS was more relieved than me as that was the first time he know I was ok. They'd got none of the messages (probably for the best as the one at the campsite just said "RTS - DaftB is down" which could be taken in two ways, and both would have been wrong). RTS and Bondy had been in the valley with binoculars scanning the routes that I could have taken off the mountain.
Now that's why we have practice runs, to learn what can go wrong to try to minimise the problems on the event itself. On Friday night Mrs Daft B will be mission control as we know she'll have reception for incoming phone calls; everyone will know last orders times after which the checkpoints won’t be manned; we'll all have landline numbers for the obvious refuges.
That was just short of a 12 hour day in the hills for me. What an adventure, however next is the real thing. I'm mostly an observer for this, however I can confirm, in case you hadn’t twigged already, that the Bob Graham Round is an utterly bonkers challenge.”
……………………which we start (assuming a decent weather window) at 6:00pm on Friday 10th June.
Additional – Thanks to Adam T, who has volunteered his services and will be joining Daft B on the mule train. Or should that be the ‘crazy train’??
fantastic. the training is enough for a book, let alone what the event will bring!!
mad as a bag of snakes, the lot of you.
can't wait for the blog on the other side of the BG!!
do let us know if we can text abuse, but it does seem that it may be better not to conserve battery power!!
The view from the crew is text abuse is perfectly acceptable however a good chance that it might not be received until much later. If you want you could snail mail me some abuse and I'll pass them to RTS at various support points.
Love the"beer chair"...
Text abuse is mandatory. Bring it on, Big Boy!
I know this may be a really naive and stupid question (and I make no apologies, it is who I am...)
but, you know walkie talkies? Are they better at making contact up in the mountains? and if you got really good ones like the rescue workers probably have, I would rest so much easier knowing that you boys could all contact each other if you needed to.
Take care up there xxx
I am going to take the kids walkie talkies up the Lakes this summer and see if they work - they were good ones from Walmart ;-)
It's a fair question - We've tried short wave radios and they only work in straight lines hence if there's something in the way (like a mountain) you can't contact each other. I think the Mountain rescue run off VHF and also have a command vehicle (similar to the radio vehicles you'll have seen at some races). Waaaaaaay beyond our budget. Your Walmart ones will be fine if there's nothing between you, you're not more than about a mile apart, and the key one is that you're all on the same channel. The whole "over" and "out" structure on conversations is key as when one person's talking, no-one else can until the person talking releases their talk button.
Now I feel clever for asking, not thick! Thank you.
The Walmart ones are really good fun. When we came back from florida last year, my kids radio'd me from the chippy to see what I wanted (1.5 miles away) and another family answered back their order (they were also playing with their summer holiday walkie talkie).
Maybe think about being sponsored by a company that produce these super hi-tech things and they would lend them to you for the race? Next year though :-)
Or learn to do smoke signals.
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and this proves there's never a daft question when we're involved. Lord Bond (the emporer of support crews) always turns up with a new gadget everytime we meet. Last Friday he turned up with smoke pellets. We had no idea why nor what the smoke pellets could be used for...until now!
Smoke pellets and a beer chair, what more could a support team need!
Last weekend Daft B and I both watched (from different mountains) a helicopter hovering around the summit of Scafell Pike. We both thought it was probably Bondy until we realised it was the mountain rescue services extracting someone who had had an 'incident'.......
........however, it is no word of a lie that Bondy is training in flying small-scale helicopters. Now that could come in useful when he is proficient.
I'd forgotten about the model helicopters, it all just washes over me as normal now!
I'm wondering what kind of strange world I'm entering... by Sunday I may not be the same person that I am today!
It's something like Narnia. You opened the door to your wardrobe and wandered into another world.
Farewell Adam!
Best of luck RTS, looking forward to hearing about how you get on.