Petestack Blog

Less than two days to go till Saturday’s Ramsay’s Round attempt and it’s getting difficult to sit and wait, but this week has to work as a ‘mini taper’ if my five-week plan of post-WHW Race recovery, some decent exercise (peaking at a slightly unplanned 68 miles/25,300 ft of proper hill running and some cycling last week!) and some necessary rest is going to come off. Which means nothing more strenuous since Saturday than some walking, an easy 5.4 mile/1,600 ft trail run yesterday and relaxed 20 mile road cycle today despite me pretty well climbing up the walls with that ‘can’t wait’ (don’t wish your life away!) feeling…

So what about this schedule Murdo asked me for the other day? Well, as I said in Saturday’s post, we’re talking broad brush strokes rather than fine detail but, after meeting Jon and Noel the other night to thrash it out, here’s the score:

• I have four accomplices (three pacers in Jon Gay, Gavin McKinlay and Ritchie Cunningham + my ‘base camp manager’ Noel Williams), we’re going for a midday start (like Charlie Ramsay’s original round) and Jon will be pacing me through the Mamores to at least Loch Treig.
• We’ve got team maps marked up with the route, Charlie’s times (which appear to be rounded to the nearest five minutes but already need treating with caution because at least one known mistake left him chasing an unbelievably fast finish) and 4km intervals (enabling comparison of what he did to a notional 4kph schedule). Maps will be laser-printed from Memory-Map (NB you can just get the whole round at 1:50,000 onto a back-to-back sheet of A4) and laminated to be folded once to carry at A5 size or possibly twice for A6.
• We’ll be meeting Gavin (who’ll have brought us some goodies on the 5:50pm train from Spean Bridge to Corrour) at railway bridge NN 342 681 (or somewhere between there and Creaguaineach Lodge) sometime between ? and 10:00pm to tackle the Loch Treig peaks overnight.
• We’ll be joined by Ritchie (who’ll have come in from Fersit with Noel) sometime between ? and 2:00am Sunday at the Loch Treig Dam, where we’ll be able to get more ‘proper’ food, clothing, shoes or anything else we need before continuing over the ‘Easains’ by night.
• While Jon will be there primarily to pace me to Corrour, my original suggestion was that we try the whole thing together and he’s likely to continue for as long as he’s going well (possibly/hopefully the whole way).
• While Gavin’s ‘shift’ officially finishes at the Lairig Leacach (leaving Ritchie as designated pacer from the Grey Corries on), he’s likewise welcome to continue further. But anyone holding up proceedings (hopefully not me!) will simply be left to find their own way off and contact Noel.
• Whoever’s still on their feet should be arriving back at Glen Nevis Youth Hostel sometime between ? and midday Sunday, which I’m also predicting means arriving at Carn Mor Dearg with a little more in hand (say two hours) than Charlie’s 70 minutes! To which I might just add that I’d still be looking for a finish (thinking experience for ‘next time’!) if things don’t quite work out within the specified 24 hours.
• Regarding the dreaded weather, things could be worse with MWIS now suggesting low cloud and spells of drizzly rain with some gusty south-westerly wind (not in itself too bad for an eastbound traverse of the Mamores). So I’d say perhaps the biggest thing there (assuming the wind’s no worse than forecast when MWIS tends to be ‘pessimistic’) might be the loss of anticipated help overnight from the nearly full moon. But beggars can’t be choosers, the whole thing’s been built round support team availability and (given what the WHW Race heat did to me) I’m not even sure I’d swap for the clear, blue skies and sunshine hopefully being enjoyed by Bruce Poll and Alan Smith (who are up there attempting the round right now and expected to finish early tomorrow afternoon).

While I couldn’t describe yesterday’s weather as uniformly nice, my round of Loch Treig with Jon was never blighted by quite such foul conditions as Friday’s ascent of Mullach nan Coirean. More of a mixed bag, really, with some pretty stern stuff punctuated by more pleasant interludes when the wind and rain relented, the cloud lifted, the sun broke through and it actually felt good to be out!

Now, this pretty well had to be the last big hill day before next weekend’s planned Ramsay’s Round attempt, and the original plan was to take the train from Spean Bridge to Corrour, run the five Munros anti-clockwise (as planned for the round) and finish back down the Lairig Leacach. But, thanks to this last-minute ‘eureka’ moment (not in the bath, but sitting in the van waiting for Jon!), it suddenly dawned on me that we could do all the peaks in the right direction but ‘wrong’ order by skipping the train, driving to Fersit and taking the ‘Easains’ first. So that’s what we did, starting up Stob a’ Choire Mheadoin and Stob Coire Easain (aka the ‘Easains’, which should be the fourth and fifth of this group on an anti-clockwise Ramsay’s), knocking up a bigger mileage in the process and causing some mental confusion because I’ve now inevitably got the Easains before Beinn na Lap in my head.

Not too many details to report, but some numbered points to accompany the map:

1. While it’s certainly possible to cut this corner from the Dam to the ‘pylon’ on the ridge, we’re happy with our line along the track and up the path (especially as we’re now looking at doing this bit by night).
2. While it made sense (in the context of yesterday’s round) to take the long southern ridge off Stob Coire Easain, we’ll be heading westwards down to the Lairig Leacach on the actual round.
3. There’s no need to worry about height loss in crossing the Allt Feith Thuill almost anywhere because it’s almost flat up to the watershed at Lochan Ruigh Phail some 1.7 miles SW of where we crossed and doesn’t drop significantly immediately to the NE of where we were. So keeping to the crest of Beinn na Lap’s NE ridge for longer before cutting straight across would be equally good.
4. Perhaps we cut NW off Sron na Garbh-Bheinne a little too soon (my fault if we did!), but at least we were losing height quickly down the steep, rough, but otherwise slow ground.
5. While we were looking for the track (6) through the trees, we came first to this easy way (with helpful horizontal batten to facilitate climbing the deer fence) through the narrowest part of the woods and are happy with that (easy to locate from above, passing an obvious knoll then a small, ‘whaleback’ crag) despite some holes in the ground at the bottom.
6. See (5) above, noting that the track (?) doesn’t actually breach the fence alongside the railway.
7. With current water levels still not that high despite all the rain, it’s possible (and therefore desirable) to cross the ‘beach’ south of the Dam.

All told, we covered 22.84 miles with c.8,300 ft of ascent in 7:21:46 (19:20 mile pace), with nearly 50 minutes of stops (discussing navigation options, lots of jackets going on and off etc.) giving a ‘moving pace’ of 17:09 miling. Which seems pretty satisfactory with the required pace for the Ramsay (assuming a 60 mile total) being 24 minute miling and my new rule of thumb (second ‘eureka’ moment of the day!) saying that, given a proportional amount of ascent per mile over the same terrain, your average mile pace in minutes equates to your finish time in hours. Which, in turn, is telling me that we can afford to (and should, with all of yesterday’s splits considerably faster then Ramsay’s) be backing off a bit on the ascents to keep body together for the long haul!

Just a few miscellaneous points left to round off for today, the first being that (due to a number of factors including the mistiming of the ‘early’ train to Corrour for the second pacer, second thoughts about potential time losses from tackling the Mamores in the dark, and generally easier ground over the Loch Treig group) I’m now strongly in favour of reverting to ‘Plan A’, which was the eastern sector by night. And, guess what (?)… looking back at Charlie Ramsay’s original schedule, that’s exactly what he did in running from midday to midday. I’ve also had an email from Murdo McEwan requesting me to post a start time and proposed schedule with pacers for each leg, so hope to do that sometime but must point out now that our schedule is likely to stay as broad brush strokes rather than peak-by-peak minutiae. And, finally, we’ve heard about yet another favoured way off Binnein Mor, starting down the NW ridge (which we’d rejected as taking us in the wrong direction) but cutting back into the coire by the two lochans. To which I can only say I’d check it if I could, but won’t be heading up there again this week and think probably ‘better the devil you know’! :-)

So the MWIS was threatening ‘gusts as high as 65mph’, ‘significant wind chill’ and ‘bands of constant rain and showers […] focused on more western mountains’, but I really needed to check out Mullach nan Coirean (most westerly of the Mamores) by the northern approach I haven’t taken for years. And the MWIS was pretty well right!

Missed an important shortcut (1) because the ‘fire break’ I was looking for didn’t jump out at me from below (seems more obvious from above, but retrospectively clear enough in ascent being c.100m past a gate), so took an unnecessary diversion (2) up the track and a tempting path (3) up the Allt a’ Choire Dheirg that I vaguely remember falling for before. But finally located the crucial path (4) despite taking the more awkward of two starts from a prominent cairn and only spotting the more appealing flight of wooden steps east of that as I passed it on the way back down. Still made the summit in 1hr 27mins, but was slightly disappointed with that till I got home and worked out that my one mile diversion (longer than I thought) had cost me nearly quarter of an hour!

Had thought of continuing to Stob Ban, but knew long before I topped out on Mullach that I’d simply be turning round and getting myself off the hill as quickly as possible. So that’s what I did, finding much of the descent to the track quite awkward (rocks, roots etc.) in the wet and thinking it’s no easier/quicker than running off the Ben (NB I know that I’m often slower descending the rougher stuff than climbing it). But perhaps I should still be happy with a 10.3 mile/3,500 ft hill run (well, OK, some easy track!) at an average of 14:00 mile pace, and should certainly be thinking of easing up on the pace a bit (let’s call this a ‘mini taper’) for any remaining runs over the next few days.

Still hoping to do the Loch Treig round with Jon tomorrow, but depending on forecast of a ‘marked improvement’ to a horrid-sounding morning and have already discussed contingency plans for more wild weather. Looks like we’re in for more ‘unsettled’ conditions for days yet (perhaps not the end of the world when I do need to start easing up now), but there’s a glimmer of hope for next weekend with today’s MWIS outlook suggesting that ‘some computer models are beginning to point towards warmer more settled wetaher [sic.] slowly extending from the south during the middle and latter part of next week’ and tomorrow’s continuing that theme with ‘little change to the present unsettled and at times windy conditions until later next week’.

Nearly a fortnight into the school holidays and, after wall-to-wall term-time sunshine through June, we seem to have had little but wind and rain since (sure, I chose to live in Lochaber, but…). So it’s been getting really quite frustrating when I’m wanting to get out for some refamiliarisation with the Grey Corries and Loch Treig peaks but struggling to persuade myself to go charging off on long, remote, solo runs in horrid conditions (although I’ve got a Loch Treig round with Jon pencilled in for the weekend that may have to go ahead regardless). Which makes a great run snatched from the most unpromising of days all the more precious, and that’s exactly what I got when the rain started to look like clearing this afternoon…

Now, my original plan (once I’d decided it was going to be another local run) was to get up into the Mamores again to re-evaluate the options currently under consideration for Na Gruagaichean and Binnein Mor, but I’d hardly been going a mile before this wee voice was telling me it might be good to take in Binnein Beag and Sgurr Eilde Mor as well. So, after considering telling the wee voice to get stuffed because I wasn’t carrying any food, of course I did! And here are the things I really want to say about my four-hour blast round the eastern Mamores:

1. The ‘short cut’ skirting the NW top of Na Gruagaichean is basically a counter-productive ‘long cut’, taking Jon and me about six minutes on Saturday when I took the stonkingly good path over the top in about four today.
2. The descent from Binnein Mor starting by the east ridge and finishing down the ‘green line’ of yesterday’s blog post is definitely on, with this way taking me some 20 minutes to the lochan where we took more like 25 on Saturday (although I’d think the direct route by the north-east ridge is probably still quicker in ascent).
3. As usual, I lost the path (but probably little time) coming back down Binnein Beag!
4. My new thumb compass (Moscow 3L) is a winner on days like this for the easy speed which it brings to checking the correct route off cloud-shrouded tops.
5. My unused, spare pair of Mizuno Wave Harriers that I’d been saving but needed to try before the big round are perfect straight out of the box.
6. I’m pretty happy with averaging 17:19 mile pace round a meaty 13.9 mile/6,400 ft course like this… despite just missing a four-hour completion (4:00:44) after arriving at the old gateway at the top of the An Cumhann path with exactly 12 minutes left to get down (which I’d have done but for the deep summer bracken ruling out the direct route down the bank behind the house). But, with cracking splits of 1:22:24 to Na Gruagaichean, 0:20:12 to Binnein Mor, 0:33:40 to Binnein Beag, 0:49:02 to Sgurr Eilde Mor and 0:55:26 back home, it would seem churlish to complain!

For the interested, the second map is captioned to show:

1. Saturday’s ‘short cut’ on Na Gruagaichean.
2. Today’s route over the NW top.
3. Saturday’s descent by Binnein Mor NE ridge.
4. Today’s descent by Binnein Mor E ridge and ‘green line’.
5. Saturday’s re-ascent of Binnein Mor.

While my recent recces with Jon of some suggested ‘shortcuts’ on Na Gruagaichean and the Devil’s Ridge have initially led us in both cases to say ‘that’s worth having’, the maths just doesn’t seem to stack up so well on getting home, analysing the data and considering time saved against time taken. So you’re trading some minor savings in ascent for rougher going off the established paths, the net result is looking remarkably like ‘six and half-a-dozen’ and we probably won’t know what we’re going to do till we get there. Handy to know the alternatives, of course (wouldn’t even consider taking them ‘blind’ at night), but still absolutely inconclusive…

And yet, strangely enough, the one routing option that’s looking increasingly right is the one we originally rejected (on the grounds of increased distance) down the east ridge of Binnein Mor. But that’s because we took this ridge in ascent, missing the obvious line up as a ‘non-line’ from below (it’s indistinct and looks like it’ll just lead back onto the steeper ridge we’d descended) and adding what could be as much as half a mile to the best way (which has to be something more like the blue or green lines marked ‘4’ on today’s maps). So take the line we’re considering now to ditch some time-consuming scrambling ‘1’ and scree/boulder-hopping ‘2’ for a very runnable route ‘3’ of similar length all the way down and I’m liking that! :-)

Last night the staircase, tonight the ridge…

Met Jon up by Lochan Coire nam Miseach this evening to check out another of Yiannis Tridimas’s outflanking manoeuvres (this time a way of skirting the Devil’s Ridge in one direction), but who knows whether it saves any time or not? On the anti-clockwise traverse we’re looking at, it’s basically substituting a contouring line and climb up a kind of grassy double trough (unmistakable when you get there) below Sgurr a’ Mhaim for the normal climb by zigzag stalkers’ path above the Lochan and run along the ridge. But the spacing of the arrows (one every five minutes?) on the GPS track seems to suggest that the ridge is every bit as quick as the avoiding line and the deciding factor probably boils down to whether or not it’s going to take longer than about 15 minutes up the path (marked in blue on the maps, with the toe of the ‘low rock outcrop’ affecting the contouring line shown as a blue dot).

So there’s some food for thought, with the benefits of following the established path over the top possibly just tipping the balance in favour of the ridge in both directions. Apart from that, tonight’s stats for me (with Jon returning north to Glen Nevis) come out at 10.55 miles and 4,750 ft in 3hrs 29mins, with just 3hrs 5mins actually recorded as ‘moving time’ due to some hanging about (GPS unusually lost signal on the way up!) and discussion of the route.

Something else I was looking at this afternoon was comparing my 2005 Tranter’s Round splits to Charlie Ramsay’s original schedule. And, while I’ve always known that my Tranter ended with more of a whimper than a bang as I squandered a good two or three hours on the second half, perhaps the comparison’s not as completely one-sided as I feared (green text shows where I was quicker and red where Charlie was quicker, with some adjustments made in final column to reflect known factors) with possibly only the ascent and descent of the Ben at the end remaining unmitigated disasters for me! :-O

With more miserable weather forecast (MWIS threatening 60mph gusts, persistent rain and lightning although the BBC suddenly/mysteriously changed their guess to ‘sunny’ this morning), today didn’t look like a good bet to check out the Loch Treig hills for my Ramsay’s Round. So Jon came down from the Fort to discuss some detailed routing options for the whole round and then (with things looking ever so much better than expected and us thinking we’d maybe missed a trick by not going for Loch Treig) we set out about midday to see what we could still learn about the Mamores after more hill-running days on that ridge than either of us can remember. And here’s what we sought and found (list numbered to match map below)…

1. The best line to bypass Stob Coire a’ Chairn (to avoid going over it twice) on the way from An Gearanach to Na Gruagaichean. Which is something I’ve never got quite right in the past, typically losing the path, contouring too far into the hill (see map from this October 2009 blog post) and popping back onto the ridge too high and too far west. But, in taking the shortcut from point 783 to the bealach before An Garbhanach and back again, we did better today.
2. A contouring option to avoid the NW (non-Munro) top of Na Gruagaichean proposed by Yiannis Tridimas in this FRA Forum topic. So normally I’d take the purist approach and go over everything, but the Ramsay’s Round requirements are quite specific in naming the 23 Munros + Sgurr an Iubhair (which has been a Munro) and we had to look at it. On which note we found it easily enough and thought it worthwhile, but I’d say the jury’s still out on this one after getting home and comparing my 2005 Tranter’s split of 50 minutes (taking in said NW top) from An Gearanach to Na Gruagaichean to a combined ‘split’ of 13 minutes from An Gearanach to the bealach mentioned above (15 October 2009) and 36 minutes from there to Na Gruagaichean (today).
3. Whether to take the direct route (involving some light scrambling and awkward scree/boulder fields) down the NE ridge (sometimes called NNE ridge?) of Binnein Mor, or…
4. The longer but easier (no hands required) alternative by the E ridge (sometimes called NE ridge?), with the direct route emerging as the clear winner [edit, 14 July: not any more… see my comment below and follow-up blog post!] on the assumption that the extra speed required to cover the extra length of the undoubtedly attractive E ridge in the same time is an unlikely proposition.

With today’s stats coming in at 14.52 miles and c.6,500 ft of ascent completed in 4:38:20 (19:09 mile pace), we’ve calculated that (from the more significant ascent figure rather than the mileage) to be about ’21-hour Ramsay’ pace. Which seems fair enough for a shorter training run, but doesn’t (I say again doesn’t) mean I’m predicting that for the big one! To sign off on an upbeat note, however, I’m starting to believe the 24 hours is realistic and I can (should?) do it if my quads hold out (no problems today). And we just beat the rain!

So we might have had some sustained sunshine through June but, predictably when you’re a school teacher and don’t get on holiday till July, it’s been raining pretty well ever since and windy enough with it at times to make proper hill running a seriously unpleasant prospect (on which note, kudos to the 60+ runners who turned up for the Half Ben on Sunday when I couldn’t even persuade myself to open the door!). But at least I’ve been getting some things done about the house, spending much of the time between Saturday’s soggy cycle to the Dam and today’s run tidying up the bombsite that’s stayed largely untouched through weeks (nay, months!) of WHW Race training and summer term business…

Now, Sunday was fair enough as a write-off and I pretty well had to wait in Monday for the delivery that didn’t come till today (horrible evening, too!). So, after my (strange but true) ‘buy one get one free’ colour laser printers arrived mid-afternoon today, I was desperate to get out. But a quick scoot at the MWIS forecast (predicting deterioration to widespread rain and 70mph gusts this evening, with worse to come tomorrow) suggested that a big hill run in the Mamores might not be the optimum choice when a quick blast over the Devil’s Staircase to Altnafeadh and back should get me home before the worst of it. So off I set, running (as usual these days) the whole way over the hill and back apart from stopping along Wade’s Road for a quick chat to Chris ‘haven’t you had enough?’ Ellis, to whom I then confessed to planning the Ramsay’s attempt. And it was while I was out today, enjoying this section of the WHW that many runners seem to hate but I love to run more than any other, that I had (thinking on my feet as usual) this interesting idea about said Ramsay’s attempt… which is, why not take the original anti-clockwise direction that’s so aesthetically pleasing if slightly tougher (?), start in the evening (say 8pm) and do the Mamores (the part I know best) by night to leave daylight for the rest? So let’s just look at what that might do for me…

• Get the inevitable night hours out of the way first on the ridge where I’ve done every peak at last five times (including three complete traverses) and most a great deal more.
• Give me a choice of Friday or Saturday night starts.
• Let me run the rest of the round (some bits of which I’ve only done once or twice before) in daylight.
• Leave me a descent (from Ben Nevis) I’ve done many times in the dark if falling behind the qualifying 24 hours but still wanting to ‘finish’.

Of course other factors might yet change things. Like deciding to start midday Saturday and do the eastern sector by night as previously mooted. Or finding out that it’s impossible for anyone to get the train in to Corrour (haven’t checked yet) to meet me if I get there too early, or Friday night’s too soon for any of my pacers. Or whatever. But I’m liking the concept at the moment.

Oh yes, and it rained again this afternoon. And blew. So I was glad I was only out for a couple of hours, with the wind on my tail once I’d turned for home!