While the second attempt had been much more successful than the first, I still felt that with the right preparation, determination and fair share of luck, I could do it quicker. Putting such thoughts to the back of my mind for a couple of years, until in 2018 I suggested the idea of a third and faster attempt to Andrew and Jack for June 2019. Jack was instantly game for the idea, but as my scheme necessarily involved the element of running as much as possible, Andrew’s flat out NO was convincing. However, he characteristically offered to be the dedicated driver if Jack and I were to go ahead with the idea. I set to work on planning timings, accommodation and transport arrangements, this time all geared towards making a quicker time more achievable. The most obvious change was to take the North to South route, but again I avoided the conventional timing, by starting at Ben Nevis at 10.00 am. This meant that if we could be up and down pretty quickly, and get a decent drive down to Wasdale head, we’d be able to do Sca fell pike in the evening before darkness fell, before doing a short night drive down to Wales and starting the ascent of Snowdon in darkness.
I set an ambitious schedule which, if achieved would get the job done in 20 hours and 15 minutes. It looked tough but do-able, so long as we encountered no problems travelling between the mountains – but that would probably be beyond our control anyway.
The only problem with choosing the weekend of 22nd / 23rd June is that so many other people do the same, attracted of course by it being the weekend when the longest amount of daylight is available. This meant that there were slow moving queues in one or two parts of the steep drag nearing the top. We were polite enough not to push anyone off the mountain if they got in our way, but we settled into a good pace with bits of running when we could, and were up and down in 3 hours 39 minutes, helped greatly by the summit approaches and peak being snowless for the first time in 11 years !
With a pretty quick turnaround at the base, we then set off on a trouble free trip south, and by the time we arrived at Wasdale head, we were exactly 1 hour up on my projected schedule. A decent paced climb to the top, for a quick selfie in beautiful evening sunshine,
and back down again to leave the car park now an hour and 5 minutes ahead of the game. Maybe because we had some time in hand, we allowed ourselves a rather generous 15 minute stop at around midnight to get petrol, food and a coffee on the run, but with an otherwise uneventful journey we still arrived at Pen-y-pas more than an hour ahead of plan. The downside to that was that the entire ascent up the Pyg track was in total darkness, which slowed things a bit, but hitting the summit of Snowdon at 4.11 am meant that we only had to make the descent inside 1 hour and 49 minutes and we’d do sub – 20 hours. Without pushing ourselves at all, we got down in 1 hour 37, giving us a total time of 19 hours 48 minutes.
Well satisfied, job done. Well done Jack – great team mate. Massive thanks to Andrew for the driving and support. Couldn’t have done it without you.
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