Mountains and Molehills

The Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon 2011, Beinn Dearg, Northwest Highlands

The LAMM this year was tucked into the mountains south of Ullapool, on the Beinn Dearg massif. This is classic munro terrane: sculpted valleys with dreamlike rivers and waterfalls. Soaring cliffs set on a backdrop of one of the most sensational mountain panoramas to be found: Suilven, Canisp and the other instantly recognisable icons of the Wester Ross landscape. The LAMM has become a national treasure, and truly deserves its reputation as a conoisseurs mountain marathon.

Front runners in the B Class

Yet when all's said and done, this is one of the toughest of challenges, whatever class you choose to undertake. It takes a special kind of mindset to give the LAMM your all. And at the beginning, it's especially tough. It takes a while to chip off the layers of civilisation that say it's going to be cold, wet and midgified and the two hard days of the event hang over you like a shroud.

At the start of the Score Class

Slowly, but surely though, you eventually embrace what you have to embrace. The cold, the wet, the never-ending, punishing and relentless terrane.

Course-setter Angela Mudge's dog, digging at the start

And suddenly, you realise that there is less and less to worry about. The mountains open out to sensational panoramas and you realise you are experiencing something quite fantastic, somewhere where you may never set foot again.

Moving through awesome landscapes: the distant peaks of Stac Pollaidh and Suilven

On the LAMM, the low point comes at 5 am on Day 2, but this is deftly turned into the high point of the weekend with the cunning use of bagpipes. You awake from your half-sleep to the dulcet sounds of the Highlands' finest- an experience to treasure. It was, unfortunately, impossible to find a willing piper in the remote location of the overnight camp in Strath Mulzie, so we were left with the accidental droning feedback of Martin Stone’s loud hailer instead (which some, rather unkindly, thought was a good substitute for the pipes…). Some disappointed LAMMers in a nearby tent made up for the piper-less wake up call with a rousing rendition of ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers”, so we weren’t short-changed…

Descending the rocky summit of Seanna Bhraigh


Somewhere along the way, this tremendous mountain journey has allowed you to restore your sense of balance, to see what's important again. And all of a sudden, you realise your mountains have become molehills.

Day 2 start with the lovely backdrop of Creag an Duine

B Class womens' team winners (I think)

A Small Scale Delight

The Rab Mountain Marathon 2010, The Eastern Fells

The Mountain Marathon season has barely started for me this year, but if there was one event to do, the Rab was the one. Cool, but clear and dry conditions made for a stunning weekend of upland, off-piste running, and as always, there was the huge privilege of being in the mountains for a whole weekend. Liberated by the unbearable lightness of modern day kit, from super-lighweight tents to the humble zip-lock bag, we were in for a two-day journey through the mountains of the mind.

As Day 1 drew to a close, Penny and I were nothing short of confused. With our carefully calibrated piece of string, we had mapped out a route that should have stretched us in the six alloted hours of running. After five, though, we'd made too much progress, and were marooned between a distant checkpoint, high up on the steep slopes of Place Fell, and the lure of the finish. In the end, we opted to finish early. But as Kate of Tea and Cake has rather bluntly pointed out, if you stay out too long, you're crap, and if you get in too early, you're crap. I guess on that day, we fell in the latter category...

In any case, our string theory worked better on Day 2, and we squeezed into the finish with a few minutes to spare. Much more satisfying. And with a third place in 'the ladies of a certain age' team category, we were chuffed to bits.

The Longest Day

Bill Williamson's Ramsay Round

Bill and Ian on the climb up Stob Coire Sgriodain

In life, we all have our mountains to climb. But for Bill Williamson, there have been more mountains than most. A year or two ago, Bill made an attempt on the greatest of all Mountain Trilogies: the Bob Graham, the Paddy Buckley and the Ramsay Round. All in one year. With the first two of these in the bag, it was the Ramsay Round that remained elusive. By far the toughest of the big rounds, this 56 or so mile loop of Scotland's most challenging mountain terrain was proving a tough nut to crack.

Ian Charters and I were Bill's pacers over the least challenging of the Ramsay Round legs- a 17 mile run taking in a few Munros including the mighty Beinn Na Lap. 'Least challenging' is perhaps a funny way of looking at it though. The terrain is as challenging as you could find in the UK, and the degree of remoteness is breathtaking. Staring around the room in the Rucksack Club hut the night before, it positively radiated with Legends of the Fell. Yiannis Tridimas, the Zen Master of Endurance ("Your trouble, my friend, is you have a low tolerance of pain..."). Alan Lucker, veteran of the UTMB and a host of other self-effacing but miraculous ultra-distance mountain runners like Bill and Ian. Even the support crew were semi-professional (the eponymous Wynn Cliff). I wasn't sure I could keep with Ian and Bill on the day, but in reality in this remote environment, there really would be no choice.

Charlie Ramsay and Yiannnis Tridimas

At the start of Bill's run, an engaging figure introduced himself as Charlie Ramsay. He'd taken the trouble to come and see Bill start, and, as with most central figures in the sport, turned out to be captivating and enthralling. It was a rare privilege to meet Charlie.

At six in the evening, Bill rounded the shores of Loch Treig where we met him for the next leg. Bill was in great shape and although the weather closed in shortly after getting up high, things were going well. The descents were tough, though. With head torches on, it was almost impossible to judge whether you would be landing on stone (hard), heather (disarmingly springy) or jet-black, still, leg-munching runnels full of icy water (which claimed a leg from each of us). It was best just to slither, and fast.

After the long, wet run through bog-lets and rivers, the wandering trace of a headtorch signalled that we about to deliver Bill to Yiannis, Will and Alan for the next leg over the Mamores. It was looking good- Bill had navigated impeccably and was very sharp despite deteriorating conditions. As the two Ians, Pauline and I took the low road for the 2 hour walk out, the wind started to pick up, and the rain slashed down.

After the crushing doubt of the previous day, I woke refreshed after a mere 3 hours sleep. But it had been heaving it down all night. For a while we pensively waited to hear news of Bill's arrival, but as the minutes ticked away, we knew. The weather had beaten him again.

Bill completed the Ramsay Round in conditions that would have flayed the lycra off most mortals. In those conditions, 26 hours was no defeat, but a shining example of mind over matter. And for me too, grappling with uncertainty and doubt in the foothills of the mind, it had been an unparalleled opportunity disguised as an impossible situation.

Sinners

Pooley Bridge pier

It's probably a bit late to talk about the incredible snow we've had here in the UK, but it really was an exceptional winter. And one that really took the rug out from underneath our feet in many ways. We can't forget the tragedies it brought, with about one death a week on the hills amongst many other lives lost and changed forever. But for the rest of us, I think it made us think differently, at least for a while.

Stu on Blencathra

Those days were like a dream now. The Eden Valley was exceptionally beautiful at -15 degrees C, draped in a new kind of cold as silent as the grave. Completely windless, too.

For some, maybe many, it was a hindrance. Me too, at first. For a day or two I sat around, wondering where to go running. On the third day, I saw this new landscape as an opportunity. Magically, it turned out the running was perfect on a bed of squeaky pack-snow. These runs turned out to be some of the most amazing runs of my life.

The magical Eden Valley

In some ways, I liked the way the snow mixed things up. Made people think about things in a different way, and slowed us down. Showed a different side to folk.



______________

It's conditions like these that make me think of a quietly brilliant film called Sinners, by Bill Heath. In amongst the noise and haste of a million adrenaline-fueled films about cutting edge skiing, Bill's film takes a different path. The film came about by talking to the folk he met whilst backcountry ski-ing in Western Canada, and chancing upon mountaineering physicist, A.J. Snow, still skiing at the age of 100.

Light and spindrift on Great Dodd

The film is beautiful and poignant. In amongst words of incredible wisdom and clarity from A.J., Bill cuts through the loud shouts of the fastest skiers and the ones with the most tricks. He shows you how beautiful it is. It's a work of art, and at the same time, whispers of a wisdom and truth that goes just a little bit beyond our normal thinking. And at its heart is a belief that being among mountains is more than what the powder junkie might see. Bill's film won the award for best mountain sports film at the Banff Mountain Film Festival in 2003.

New Year's Eve

Montserrat, northern Spain


Whilst Stu's running days were sadly curtailed by a ski-ing accident some years ago, he still has a creative genius when it comes to suggestions for unique runs. There was a memorable run in a long Sardinian cave system when hailstones the size of eggs were falling outside. And now this- a run through the mythical spires of Montserrat in north east Spain on New Year's Eve.



From the south, the immense conglomerate spires of Montserrat are captivating. A long line of almost excessive serrations, deeply incised teeth set in a flat plain. Driving up to them from the north, the sensation is the same, a dizzying steepness, spire after turreted spire.



Running up past the largest of the many monasteries and into the river-worn clefts between spires was like a running dream. The chattering crowds emptying out of the Basilica were headed the other way, back to the coaches. A few people lingered on the paths, not really sure how far to go in the fading light. I ran on and up to the top of Sant Jeroni, the largest of these incredible peaks. I arrived as the sun was about to set.



Many places like this are imbued with a sense of religious significance for obvious reasons: they are quite magical. But grains of truth are easy to come by in so many different ways, and aside from my conspiratorial run through this landscape of dream-like beauty, there were backpackers slowly and silently making their way to the tops of the spires to await the dawn of the New Year.



Running down the paths, the spires turned red in the evening light, appearing in and out of the trees and stretching away in the mind's eye. The full moon rose from behind a cloud, bathing the monastery in an orange glow. So this was the last run of 2009, and it was surely one to remember.

Three Triathlons and a Mountain Marathon

Penny and I at the start of the Rab (photo courtesy of Jon Brooke, www.rightplacerighttime.co.uk)

It's been a crazy but fun month of doing big things. Thanks to a slip of the mouse on one or two online entry forms, I had been looking sidelong at September with a slight sense of trepidation. Most of that was down to one thing: the Helvellyn Triathlon. Not an event for the faint-hearted, it is a mile long swim in a cold lake, a 38 mile bike ride over Lakeland passes at their lung-busting best, then a 9 mile fell run to the Helvellyn ridge and back.

The other things were really just sharpeners, diversions from the main event. A sprint distance triathlon in Penrith and a club-organised tri in Appleby. And of course, there was the Rab Mountain Marathon.

Organised chaos in the transition area

But anyway. Back to The Helvellyn. The swim went like a breeze. The course was shortened a little as the water temperature was a bit low- any cooler and it would have had to be cancelled. And then from the drunken shadow-boxing out of the wetsuit, it was the long bike ride. If anything, this was the thing that drained the tanks, left the legs aching and crampy. But still, fascinating way to get that exhausted feeling without spending hours and hours on the hills...

By the time I'd got rid of the bike, everything from the waist down was in some kind of pain or cramp. It was an incredible feeling to know that 9 miles of mountain lay between me and a rest. As I hobbled those first few hundred metres while the legs adjusted to the run, Gill Douglas ran along side, as she had done for all the Arragons Cumbrian Triathlon Club folk. Before dropping back at the end of our one-sided conversation, she said '...just believe...'



These four events were a bag of chalk and cheese, as different from each other as they could get. The triathlon is a fun thing but it is, deep down, a contrivance, a fun thing to do with some fitness and a lot of equipment, but certainly a man-made game. The mountain marathon is different. It's about being absorbed into the mountains, going, as they say, where few men (or women) have gone before...

Penny on the Rab Mountain Marathon, the Howgills



The Rab was in the Howgills, those resting elephant-backs covered in a soft grass like the scruffy fur on a Border Terrier. They are, on any day of the week, some of my favourite hills to run in. It was a fantastic experience to spend two days running through them, slogging along sloping contours and into remote valleys where the situations were as grandiose as I'd seen on the LAMM in Scotland.





Perhaps the joy of mountain marathons is the sheer simplicity of knowing all you have to survive for two days is on your back. It's the kind of event where the mental and physical sides meet up, and if either one is not up to it, the game is over. To maintain the level of concentration needed while the tides of your mental state ebb and flow over two days is to slowly understand what you're capable of, what can or can't break you, and underneath it all, to perform a simple test of the spirit.



6.30 am, Cautley Spout

A glimpse of the English Schools Fell Racing Champs at Sedbergh



It's been a rewarding month of stepping onto the plate, and asking some big questions of myself. Give or take the odd moment of doubt in exhaustion, the answers have been positive. Chalk and cheese they all might be, but somewhere underneath it all, Gill was right. It just boils down to what you believe.

The Long Way Round to a Sense of Quietness

Sour Milk Ghyll gearing up for the rainy season

Sometimes, the best laid plans just aren't meant to happen, and as Rabbie Burns aptly pointed out, go 'agley' (whatever that means). Often, as Rabbie said, you're left with naught but grief and pain, but sometimes, maybe, a sense of peace and stillness can break out where you least expect it.

It went fairly 'agley' for me recently on a run round the back of Blencathra. I'd carefully planned an elegant but simple loop for the day, ending on the mighty track of the Cumbria Way. It didn't take long to realise it wasn't going to be straightforward, as the wind picked up and repeated storms flashed over and over. I was, in defiance of the weather, wearing too little. Breaking in some new fell shoes was another distraction from the real point of the run. And most irritating of all, the fells seemed to be coated ankle deep in moving sheets of achingly cold water.

To cut a long story short, I never made it even half the distance to my intended destination. Relief at reaching the river Caldew and the lovely Cumbria Way path just beyond it was dashed as I saw what the river had become. It was huge, and erupting rhythmically into big, brown standing waves like the backs of roaring bears. Dangling a leg in to see what it was like, I knew I had only one choice. Run round, or be mangled trying to cross it.

It turned out to be quite a long way round. The going was tough without real paths and with all that sheeting water. This was clearly the road less travelled as I eyed the alluringly- smooth track just a few metres away, beyond the Zambezi in full spate. But I did come across a beautiful badger's sett on this unpeopled side of the river, and felt little clouds of stillness rise up from the reeds.

After a few miles I was able to cross the torrent at a bridge, and ended up at the beautiful Lakeland hamlet of Mosedale. The day might have gone a bit 'agley', but having been forced to follow the Caldew all the way to its resting place on the flatlands, I had been tipped out of the fells at the Quaker Meeting House. Open for tea and cake, it said. Muddy, scratched and not a little bit damp, I sat on a pew and drank in the sense of immense, timeless peace.

Over a pot of tea and slice of cake, I listened as the lady at the urn recounted tales of entire trees being swept downstream, and once, her hen house. And in between conversations, the walls oozed stillness. Four hundred years of thoughtful meditation. I walked out of there a little different from when I went in.

Would I have felt this if my day's journey had been an easy run, predictable, planned, and executed to the letter? The answer is, I just wouldn't have got there at all.

Brass rubbings inside the Quaker Meeting House, Mosedale

Running Mad on Arran

The bunkhouse shoe collection

A few Eden Runners were up on Arran last week for a spot of bog trotting...and what a week it was. Amongst turbid and cloudy skies, the tumbling granite peaks arranged in wonderful horseshoes, the world was our oyster...almost. The weather played a blinding hand though, leading us on to thinking the worst on days that turned sunny, then luring us onto the tops in hideously wintry conditions.


Leaving Beinn Tarsuinn

Never mind this though. Arran is a place to come back to, to plan further runs, glen to glen. The sense of drama on the granite tops, weathered into cartoon mountain shapes, is fantastic. A mountain paradise.

The beautiful ridge of A Chir.

Running melded into scrambling amongst the boulders and ridges on the high peaks of Arran. Not for everyone, for sure, but for us, a gift.



Glen Sannox

Gill on the fast descent into Glen Rosa

Happy donkey, Glen Rosa

We need a holiday to get over the holiday- for us a full on, high octane mountain-fest of fun with friends. However varied our individual ambitions for the holiday were, I think we all had a scream of a time.

Three Days, One River

Wednesday night: Eden Runners club run

Round the back of Mosedale, the River Caldew slices through the bog and bracken on its way to the flatlands to the north, draining Skiddaw in the process. In spate, it is fast-running and broad. During the dry spells, it is flat, glittery and littered with stones like the true Highland rivers of the north.

Anticipating a gentle shuffle up along the path to Skiddaw House, I got swept along on a rather more purposeful journey: to find The Broxap Boulder. Known to a select few (or perhaps everyone but me..), Andy Sharples offered to point out the whereabouts of a boulder that allowed you to cross the Caldew 'without getting your feet wet', a secret imparted to Andy by Jon Broxap.

This stepping stone on Leg 1 of the Bob Graham Round took a bit of finding. Launching into tussock, then whipping heather stalks, we aimed roughly at the river. After some slewing back and forth, and with, it has to be said, dripping feet, we found the boulders. We bounced back and forth across them to prove, rather forlornly, that we could cross the river without getting our feet wet, then trudged back out along the little swathe through the heather carved by the feet of the few.

Back at the cars, I threw myself into a roaring plunge pool in the River Caldew.

Thursday morning: a recce of Leg 1 of the Bob Graham Round

The first leg of the Bob Graham Round, for those who don't know, takes a U-shaped course over first Skiddaw, then Great Calva and up the great broad back of Blencathra. These three immense climbs make up the 5 or 6000 foot or so of ascent on this leg.

The July monsoon season had started again. Thick blankets of cloud held Skiddaw’s grey top as the first rains thundered in on the wind. I scooted down the back side of Skiddaw into the cloud and got out the compass. There is a wonderful mathematical simplicity about moving on a compass bearing. A complex life form being guided by a few spinning atoms of iron. Distance, speed and time in a white darkness of clouds.

Moving up Great Calva's vast flank, a poem by Rumi on the iPod made me jump:

"...Keep walking
Till there is no place to get to.
Don't try to see through the distances
That is not for human beings.

Move within,
But don't move the way fear makes you move.
Move within..."

With these longish runs, you can slowly prise back the tightly bound leaves of what the brain thinks the body can withstand. It's a good thing to do.


Friday night: light support of Cathy Gill's Bob Graham Round



At the age of 17, Cathy Gill was attempting to be the youngest woman to complete the Bob Graham Round. I'd offered to help by running into the notch between Skiddaw and Great Calva with some soup with her mum and sister, Dawn and Jane.

Only things weren't quite as they should have been. First and foremost, the weather was unbelievably bad. So bad that nobody really knew whether it was sensible to even start. And Dawn was so ill with the 'flu that she should really have been in bed, not standing in the middle of Keswick in the thundering rain.

Cathy Gill and Stuart Hurst on Leg 1

Dawn was wearing the accumulated anxiety of a mother about to watch her daughter set out on a 70 mile run across the mountains along with a bout of flu in the time of an epidemic. She handed me an enormous tub of soup, then a few bottles of water.

We set off, not quite sure whether we'd get there in time.

'I wonder if we'll make it in time' Dawn whispered, in concerned tones. A little later, she suggested that we start running while she walked behind...

Janey bounced off, unencumbered by the burdens of either age or soup. I thought about mentioning that I couldn't run with this much weight, but started shuffling anyway. It seemed to work, so I kept going. Soon, I was running with eyeballs out, stupidly trying to catch up with Jane. The path had become a river, and plodging through it, I remembered that I had gulped down too much tea in the anxious moments before Cathy's start, and now needed to go to the loo. Still, there was no time for that if the soup was to arrive.

We did indeed get to the crossing point just in time. Cathy, Adam and their pacers were as wet and slick as seals, while the rest of us sherpas just looked drowned. After a few gulps of soup, they were off into the mist, and we traced our steps back over the Caldew, one more time.

The pacers taking a breather

Running back to the car, the Glenderaterra River was spewing for its entire length at angry fire hydrant strength. The Caldew would be an immense, brown torrent by now, and even the Broxap Boulder would be engulfed.

_________________

In the conditions, Cathy and Adam did amazingly well. Cathy had to retire at Dunmail as the wind and rain on the Helvellyn range had worn them down. Adam continued on to Leg 3 but also had to give in to the weather eventually. Cathy has already started planning another attempt in August.

If...

Ian Charters' 55 peaks at 55



On 13th June, Ian made his third and final attempt to complete an extended round of 55 Lake District peaks in under 24 hours. Having completed 51 of them in September last year, it was a fair bet that if conditions were perfect, he could make it.

Ian was on bang on target coming into Wasdale as I stood in delighted disbelief at once again being in the company of Jos Naylor. He had arrived in David Powell-Thompson's Subaru, perhaps more mobile office than means of transport. It was stacked, layer upon layer with first paint spattered tools, then dog-eared and yellow books on the history of the Duddon Valley.


Jos, David, Ian, Alistair and my arm. Photo by Pauline Charters

As the time came for Ian, Colin, Alistair and myself to leave Wasdale for Dunmail Raise, Jos fixed Ian with his timeless, raven-like stare. 'Now don't give up, lad... however hard it is...' he said, gravely, and you knew Jos had been there, lived those long hours of pain. A salvation through suffering that Ian would relive again, one more time.

In the shattered landscape of the Scafell massif, the light flicked on and off through fast moving veils of low cloud. The rocks turned intermittently gold and grey as the sun went down, and the atmosphere was electric.



The sun eventually disappeared, and the wind dropped. This was a heady, charged silence to be running through in the dot-light of a head torch. Hour after hour of black silence and mountain, and then the single melodic warble of a skylark.

Ever so slowly, time had been trickling away as each black peak came and went. Ian had been feeling sick, and wasn't able to eat enough. And the gut wrenching moment came when he called it a day, after something like 18 hours on the run.

Looking in on the sidelines of these long distance attempts, it is hard to really understand what it is like, how much you really have to put in, and what it takes out of you. Being part of a support team, you invest a little bit of yourself, and add your hopes to the heap. So we all felt for Ian when he made this tough decision.


It would be easy to see only disappointment after this, but that would be just half the story. So few people dare to contemplate such extended rounds, let alone in their most unforgiving and committing original versions. So few are prepared to give what it takes to try.

It was not the outcome that defined the level of Ian's achievement, but what he chose to measure himself by in the first place. And for the experience of running through mountains with Ian and his friends? I think we are all the richer for it.