Much in the same vain as Rob, Dick and Barry from Nick Hornby’s novel (later turned film) “High Fidelity” I have often been known to construct ‘top 5’ lists… top 5 hill running records? …anyone?
When looking to plan a longer challenge, I thought about combining my top 5 favourite hills into a continuous run. My favourite Munro is Cairn Toul so that was a definite, my favourite overall hill is King’s Seat so that was in too. Arthur’s Seat probably had to be up there and then there are some lovely borders hills. What about Cruachan? It quickly became apparent that even if I could construct a definitive top 5, running them together was probably just not going to work.
It was this line of thought that led me to thinking it may be better to just run the highest 5 mountains in the country. Sound enough idea but with the split between Lochaber and the Cairngorms I figured it would be as well to just run the Scottish 4000’s by foot. Not a new challenge obviously, but a big challenge nonetheless.
Then it hit me what I needed to do….run the 10 highest mountains in the country and for good measure link back to the starting point to make it a proper ‘round’. Early basic calculations showed the route to be 360km and approximately 12,000m of climbing. I decided to go for a 6 day plan thinking 60km and 2000m of climbing would make each day fairly bearable and allow for good rest and refuelling every night. 6 ultras in 6 days… what could possibly go wrong!
Day 1 – Glen Nevis to Moy
57.9km, 2727m in 9hr 16min.
Day 2 – Moy to Glen Feshie
63.1km, 853m in 7hr 38min.
Day 3 – Glen Feshie to Linn of Dee
54.8km, 3149m in 9hr 55min.
Day 4 – Linn of Dee to Fearnan
74.0km, 1160m in 8hr 52min
Day 5 – Fearnan to Bridge of Orchy
71.8km, 1820m in 9hr 36min.
Day 6 – Bridge of Orchy – Glen Nevis
56.1km, 1470m in 6hr 56min.
Final Stats
Total Distance: 377km
Total Ascent:10057m
Time Taken: 5days 5hr 56min 47sec
Running Time: 52hr 13min
So whats next then? As I write this it’s almost a week since I finished and I’m still a bit tired so nothing too soon but as always I have a few wee ideas ticking away in my head which might just lead to the next challenge.
John Hammond
Read the full account in the next issue of the journal!