The ridiculous UK 3 Peaks Challege - Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike & Snowdon in 24 hours

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I've never really hiked mountains before, but one of the guys in the office thought it would be good to get a team of 4 together to do the 3 peaks challenge - which involves hiking the highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales within a 24 hour period, including driving between the mountains (and they are somewhat epic drives). I'd been curious to see that part of the UK, and foolishly took him up on the challenge. The team consisted of two Canadian mounties who had clearly done a lot of hiking in their time, and one angry Irishman, who I think had done a fair bit of hiking, but between trying to understand his accent and taking the expletives out of his sentences I wasn't sure what he had done. So we had a team, we hired a car, drew some lines on the map and we were ready to roll!

You can read more about the 3 peaks challenge and its history here. It's something that is becoming an increasingly popular challenge to take on.

Most people start it at Ben Nevis at 5pm on the Friday night, but we decided to start on Saturday morning instead, as we worked Friday and left straight from the office on Friday afternoon to get up to spend the night in Fort William before heading up Ben Nevis first thing Saturday.

I think I first realised how drastically under-prepared for the trip I was on Friday morning when I turned up to the office with my little back pack and the other 3 guys are all there with massive packs, complete with walking poles, water packs, protein powders and first aid kits. All I had was a couple of Snickers bars and spare t-shirts!

The drive up the A82 from Glasgow airport was stunning, beautiful winding roads running along side the many lochs and surrounding mountains. However, the over-riding thought in my head was that I was climbing the tallest mountain in Scotland, yet the ones surrounding us on the drive seemed steep enough to me!

We arrived at the hostel at Glen Nevis, right at the start of the walking trail, just before midnight and hoping to get a solid 7 hours of sleep before the 24-hour challenge began. Sadly our 7 bed dorm contained one man whose snoring was possibly a touch louder than your average power tool and nobody could get any sleep! We were going to start possibly the toughest physical and mental challenge we could on no sleep. Great. At least we got a cooked breakfast before we hit the trail.

We touched the car at exactly 8:20am on a beautiful Saturday morning to head up Ben Nevis. My Garmin initially had trouble picking up satelites so I started at the back and the group set off at a cracking pace at the initial steep section. Trying to keep them in sight was a challenge and after 40 minutes I was one litre of water in and wondering if I could make it. I then found my second win, tore past the angry Irishman and nearly caught the Canadian mounties as I got up Ben Nevis in 2 hours and 10 minutes. The track was nice in parts, treacherous and steep in others and just before the top there was a bit of snow to go over which I didn't enjoy. From the top you had perfect 360 degree views of...absolutely nothing - the top was completely in cloud and fog, but about a third of the way from the top we got fantastic views of the surrounding mountains and lochs. I tried to look as much as I could without slipping on the steep rocky path on the way down.

I got back to the car at 12:20pm and we did a quick change, rearranged ourselves and set off for Scafell Pike, which was supposed to be a lazy 6 hours away. We ended up taking a touch longer than that due to roadworks in Northern England (when is there not roadworks!). We planned out the drive nicely so that everybody drove for an hour and a half. Lucky mine was mostly highway. It was a nice day and we were all pretty chirpy on the road, mostly me sledging the angry Irishman after I beat him up Ben Nevis.

The last 7 miles in Wasdale, where the trail started, were through some crazy narrow winding roads with stone walls on either side but we eventually got there and started Scafell Pike in glorious evening sunshine at 7pm. The first couple of kilometres were nice, and we saw many mountain sheep on the way, but then it got real steep and ugly and we seemed to lose the path. In jumping off a rock I landed funny and twisted my left ankle. The last of the 4.6kms up the mountain were particularly steep and the boys were trying to crack an hour 40 minutes so we went pretty hard. I was really struggling for air and started grunting like Maria Sharapova which gave the boys something to laugh at. We mountain was pretty flat on top and we finally hit the clearly marked summit in 1 hour 37 minutes, once again surrounded by fog and cloud. We took our time heading down as my ankle was a bit susceptible to rolling. Towards the end of the descent it started to get pretty dark as it was after 10pm. At one point I tripped, rolled my ankle and then accidentally turned off the path onto a sharp descending cliff where I uncontrollably bolted down a sharp hill for 10 metres before somehow stopping myself from tumbling another 100m down the cliff. After that I was in massive shock and keen to just get the hell off the mountain, get my shoe off, get out the Voltarin and rest up on a 4 hour drive to Snowdon.

I got to sleep for the first half of the trip to Snowdon and then needed a Red Bull to get into the drivers seat at 1:20am to get us to Snowdon. Surprisingly my ankle and legs were feeling OK and I wasn't too stiff. Then again maybe the caffeine and sugar high from the Red Bull was also making me delusional. At this point I would kill for a bed. Preferable away from the stench of the rest of the team in the car. I drove past lots of unpronouncable Welsh towns right into Pen-y-pass, where the trail to Snowdon began.

We set off for Snowdon at 3am, after all tumbling out of the car moaning with stiffness. Obviously we all had head torches and there was a thick fog that meant we couldn't see more than 10 feet in front of us. Luckily the trail was nice terrain for the first kilometre as we adapted to the conditions. This was the coldest of the 3 hikes we had done, so I donned my ski jacket for the final climb instead of the other 2 where I was just in a t-shirt. After the first km of hiking, the terrain got pretty tough, lots of steep rocks and we even couldn't find the path at one point - just climbing up rocks trying to find our way in the dark. We even had to cross a waterfall with slippery rocks at one point. At about 4am it started to get light and a few hundred metres before we hit the summit the head torces were off as we hit the summit in eerie first light surrounded by fog once again. The summit was similar to Scafell Pike, just a small little block of bricks telling you where you are. We turned and headed straight back down with the comfort of knowing we were well within the 24 hour target.

My ankle was surprisingly good as we bounded down the mountain to touch the car at 6:40am. The challenge complete in 22 hours and 20 minutes - well within the 24 hour target and we celebrated with high 5's as we were too disgustingly sweaty for a hug - as much as the Canadians love some man-touch. We were done - we spent 20 minutes surveying the damage, broken toenails, chaffing, sunburn, stiffness all over - even the angry Irishman didn't have the energy to let the expletives fly - but we were all inwardly stoked that we had taken this on and won the day!

For me, I would never have made it without the competitiveness of trying to keep up with the team and being part of the team. I lost count of the amount of times I wanted to just sit on a rock and cry. At some point in the trip, all 4 of us wanted to vomit, couldn't eat, was hurt, and it was those moments that made the finish all the more satisfying.

It's a strange feeling sitting in a car at 7am and thinking you were done for the day - we had to soldier on and drive to Stoke-on-Trent, which was 2 hours away. I was on navigation duty and it felt like my brain was operating at about 5% of its usual speed as I mixed up lefts from rights and couldn't count...although some would say that is fairly normal behaviour from me. I needed another Red Bull to get me through. We rewarded ourselves with the large breakfast at Wetherspoons in Stoke-on-Trent, and were amazed at the fact that at 9:30am the pub could have 20-odd old men drinking pints on a Sunday morning. We then jumped on the train and headed back to London for a well needed shower and 14 hour sleep!

To sum up - this is how it went down.
8:20am - hike Ben Nevis
12:35pm - drive to Wasdale
7:00pm - hike Scafell Pike
10:30pm - drive to Pen-y-pass
3:00am - hike Snowdon
6:40am - complete the challenge in 22 hours, 20 minutes!

Just to prove that I did it and that these times were real, here are the results from my excellent Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS watch, which amazingly lasted all 3 climbs without running out of batteries!

Ben Nevis GPS detail
Scafell Pike GPS detail
Snowdon GPS detail

If you are prospective 3 peaks challenge participant and happen to be still reading - here are some excellent tips for you so that you don't fall into the same traps as me:
1 - Invest in some hiking equipment, such as decent pair of shoes and a set of walking poles
2 - Cut your toenails before you leave, particularly if you haven't for a couple of months
3 - Take a spare pair of underwear. Sweating right through them, then sitting in a car for a few hours, then hiking again leads to a fair bit of chaffing
4 - If you trip on a rock, try not to trip towards the cliff
5 - Don't let the angriest man drive the narrow winding roads if you are prone to getting carsick

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