by Helen Kewell 

Alright it wasn’t just me (I was with a group of 12) and it wasn’t 24 hours (it was 24 hours and 3 minutes) but there were definitely three very large mountains and I ascended and descended each glorious, magnificent one of them! I was a bit blasé about the National Three Peaks challenge if I am honest. I am above-averagely-but-not-mentally fit – check. I like being outdoors – check. I like and am I used to mountains (I am a snowboarder and I spent 1 and a half ski seasons working in the Alps, mountains are my friends if you like) – check. I am competitive – triple check. Oh, and, Greg (the person responsible for taking me up and down all of these peaks) is a long-time friend who I would trust with my life (which came in handy but more on that later.) OK looking good so far. So up until about 6 weeks before the event the most preparation I did was set up my Just Giving page, organise 48 hours of childcare courtesy of my sister and book the kids one day off school! 

Thankfully 2 things happened to break my complacency! Firstly, thanks to Go Commando, the organisation who were leading the event, I was  whipped into a frenzy by a series of increasingly frequent and scary ‘count down’ emails which slowly revealed to me (reading between their lines) the full enormity of what to expect. Talk of ‘resting’ the week before the event (‘you will need it’) and bringing no fewer than 3 pre-prepared bags of clothes for each peak ‘including underwear and headtorches’. OK they had my attention. I was now all ears – and suddenly my preparations took on a more appropriately serious nature! Secondly I went on a training walk, which all National 3 Peakers are required to do. This is to get used to the pace (!) and to try out kit (which I was now frantically buying and purloining from family members and friends) and to talk more about the day itself. A 600 mile round trip to Snowdonia from Sussex starting at 4.30am leaving the children tucked up in bed under the capable watch of Granny and Grandad and returning at 9pm felt like a pretty realistic training scenario. We had a glorious day, boots and kit worked well and I talked (a little too much!) to people who had done it before and to the group leaders, and my good friends, Greg and Charlotte. The upside of all this was that I now fully appreciated this was going to be what it said on the tin – a challenge. I upped my training, you could catch me most weekends in the hilly woodlands near our house doing hills and intervals training and squatting and lunging as if my life depended on it! 

Fast forward 6 weeks. I am at my sisters (let’s call it Base Camp) checking and double checking mine and my husbands three bags of  kit and cooking, making and bagging our food for the next 24 hours. Now I have never laid out a whole 24 hours food before me on a table before (not sure why I would!) but I am pretty sure if I had ever done that it would take up a lot less of the table top than ours did that evening. Pasta salad, filled bagels, bircher muesli, couscous salad, 18 cereal bars, 6 bananas, 12 grab packs of mixed nuts/sweets/dried fruits, 8 bottles of Powerade, a flask of coffee and 4 litres of water. I felt sick looking at it and it didn’t get any better when I came to force it down my neck in each in-between bus journey as Greg cheerily shouted ‘OK guys you are going to want to start eating now to get ready for the next mountain’ No. What I wanted to do was not eat, give my tummy a rest from the carbs and the sugar and maybe just have a handful of grapes. For someone who has spent the best part of her adult life watching the amount of carbs and sugar and fat I eat, this should have felt like all my Christmases come at once, instead it felt like torture! 

The bus journey up to Ben Nevis was eerily quiet with short snaps of nervous chatter as we got know the other members of the group and people tried to bank some extra sleep for the sleepless night ahead. But thankfully the 7 hours passed quickly and the benefit of being cooped up for that long meant that when we unfolded ourselves out of the mini-bus at Fort William we were gagging for exercise and fresh air. Which was lucky. There was very little but that, mixed with a lot of sweat and rain, for the next 24 hours! Ben Nevis was our first adversary and we spent the first hour acclimatising to the pace, the physical requirements of incline+pace+backpack and to each other. I attacked this ascent with trademark determination and gusto, never forgetting the advice of a 3 Peaks Challenge veteran to “stay welded to the back of the guide” as when stops came (few and far between!) you get the longest rest available! This tip alone probably got me through the challenge. Getting up seemed relatively easy, I felt the familiar but not unwelcome mixture of stiffness and fatigue in my hamstrings and glutes and made a mental note to stretch before getting back in the van! Descending became a race against the gathering dusk (we had ascended quite quickly and were in with a chance to get down before dark). This was more of a scramble and I was glad of my poles, saving my knees some of the impact. Racing down large flat stones sprinkled with drizzle wasn’t much fun but we were happy to be down as dark fell. Expecting to kick back, have a stretch and a drink we were then greeted with short orders from our guide “right, refill your camel packs, change as quickly as possible and get on the bus – leaving in 5 minutes!” 5 minutes wasn’t even enough time to have a pee! With hindsight I realise that this is all part of the strategy of getting it done in the time available, make up time where you can. Chatting and stretching can wait – just get on the b%@*^y bus and get gone! Probably the most difficult thing about the whole challenge is nailing the ability to eat pre-prepared high carb food whilst changing out of wet clothes in a confined space and being hurtled round hair-raising bends through the Scottish highlands/Lake District/Welsh National Park (delete as applicable) without throwing up. I am never likely to use this skill again but I can confirm it is one that I have added to my repertoire!

Changed, fed and bag ready for the next ascent I tried to sleep whilst listening to rain lashing against the dark windows of the van, trying not to focus on the prospect of Sca Fell Pike in the rain and wind and dark at 2am. Thankfully as we gathered at the stile at the foot of SFP it was eerily quiet and dry but dark as a coal hole. Head torches on and after a quick head count we set off. Walking up a mountain in the middle of the night might seem like an odd thing to do but it feels strangely natural whilst you are doing it! It was a game of ‘three thirds’ in the end. The first third was a fairly uneventful and not too challenging ascent of 2/3 of the peak. The second third lasted about 2 hours whilst we lost our way in cloud/fog and hail only moments from the peak itself. Huddled together for warmth and talking inanely whilst Greg valiantly went off with compass and map to re-establish the path. This plumbed the depths of most of our resilience and fortitude (especially when the hail started whipping at us!) but was fast forgotten when at 5.50am we assembled on the peak just as a hazy light was beginning to dawn.

The last third doesn’t really bear mentioning, suffice to say it was very wet and some of us had to wring out even our underwear once we thankfully reached the bus…. Snowdon by comparison was glorious; warmish with a light wind, only a light rain, intermittent sunshine and glorious views. All sense of teamwork disappeared at this point as we had just under 2 and a quarter hours to get up AND down to achieve the challenge! In small groups of equal pace we raced, scrambled, strode and clambered without a stop in order to reach the summit – the most difficult thing being navigating round the many crowds of people who chose to ascend this popular mountain of a Saturday morning. ‘Touch and run’ at the top we were told, so we touched, threw some more trail mix and water down, and ran for most of the descent, clock watching as we went. Gone were the polite ‘excuse me’s’ of the way up. ‘COMING THROUGH!’ we shouted (that was the most polite it got) as we barged the tourists out of the way leaving them tutting in our wake.  We burst into the car park 3 minutes late (who’s counting?). Thereafter I had probably the best cup of tea I have ever tasted, accompanied by a cheese and onion pasty. Job done. Would I do it again? Absolutely (in fact I felt quite bereft when the next challenge started the following week, following their progress on facebook!). It took 3 days and a lot of fluid replacement for my body to feel like my own again and there was the small matter of a trip to hospital for a particularly nasty toe, but in general I escaped unscathed and with a sense of having achieved something special. My husband and I raised £1,940 for the Child Bereavement Charity as the icing on the cake. Naturally my sights are now set on the next challenge, Welsh 14 Peaks here I come….next time perhaps wiser and not so complacent.

 

Did you know that walking helps cognitive function? So anyone doing regular exercise, and one of the best forms of exercise is walking, increases their oxygen uptake by 5%. This increases blood flow to the frontal areas of the brain. So my suggestion for anyone that wants to win Mastermind, improve their performance at work or even just compete in the local pub quiz, is to get their boots on and take to the hills. Just 9 miles per week can boost your brainpower. Imagine how clever you would be after completing the 3 Peaks with 26 miles of terrain to cover. Or you may want to take it easy on the Snowdon Horseshoe with just 11 miles to walk. Go Commando organises lots of walking events for a variety of fitness levels, so whether you want to burn calories or ward of diabetes or a heart attack, let your feet do the talking!