Bob Graham Round Support

Our friend Steve has spent the year running ridiculously long distances, among other things for an attempt at the Bob Graham Round. This weekend was the date, and Rachel and I drove up to the Lake District to support him.

For those who don’t know, the Bob Graham Round is a 42 peak, 66 mile challenge that has to be completed in 24 hours. It starts in Keswick and takes in Skiddaw and Blencathra, the whole Helvellyn ridge, most of the central Lake District peaks, before winding back to Keswick via Dale End and Robinson. Steve was starting at 6:30pm, so he was doing the Dodds and Helvellyn in the dark, and asked me to run that section with him, in the hope that I could help with the night navigation. Rachel was doing the following section, from Dunmail Raise to Wasdale via the Langdales and Scafell.

We spent saturday getting my parents to Manchester for their flight back to New Zealand, with a stop at the Roaches to stretch our legs and pick loads of Billberries. Yum! Then after dinner we drove up to Threlkeld where I was meeting Steve.

Steve arrived about 10pm, looking pretty strong, and well up on his schedule. After a short break, we set off up Clough Head. The climb went well, and we arrived at the top a few minutes quicker than planned, but with it now fully dark, and in quite thick cloud. The leg to Great Dodd went well enough, and fortunately we found the summit carn fairly quickly as by this stage visibility even with lights was about five metres.

After Great Dodd we followed the ridge along to Watson Dodd and Stybarrow Dodd. Watson was a bit of a disaster as we left the path too early and then after we had found the cairn, promptly missed the ridge on the way back to the path. We lost another couple of minutes trying to find the cairn at Stybarrow, but then quickly found the path down to Sticks Pass. The next two peaks, Raise and White Side were uneventful as the path goes right to the summit of each, but the poor visibility meant it was hard to run fast even on the downhills so we were losing time against the schedule on almost every leg.

The climb up to Helvellyn Lower Man was easy, and remarkably it was almost perfectly calm—I can’t imagine there are many days you can climb Helvellyn at night in just a t-shirt and shorts, even if you are running! From there, we hit the trig on top of Helvellyn perfectly, but things started to go wrong after that. At Nethermost Pike we needed two goes to find the summit, and I picked out the cairn above High Crags as the next one to visit, rather than Dollywaggon Pike, so dragged Steve up an unnecessary hill. From here we descended to Grisedale Tarn, dropped some gear off and went up Fairfield.

Fairfield was horrible. The steep climb seemed neverending, and then once we got to the summit plateau we couldn’t find the cairn (again), but eventually we were descending again, having lost more time, before the final climb to Seat Sandal and then the big drop to Dunmail Raise and the car. We got there around 3am, about 10 minutes down on the original schedule, mostly because we couldn’t descend fast in the cloud, and we kept missing the best lines.

We met Rachel and Yuko at the car, and since I was feeling pretty good, I decided to continue with Steve and Rachel on the next section. We spent a few minutes filling water bottles, our packs and ourselves, and then set off up Steel Fell. By the top it was light enough to read the map without a torch, and the cloud had mostly cleared so we could at least see where we were going, but Steve was struggling to eat enough, and we were still losing time on most legs. Calf Crag came and went, and then we struggled in morning mist to find the summit of Sergeant Man.

After a quick diversion to High Raise, we had the mostly downhill section to Thunacar Knott, Harrison Stickle and Pike O’Stickle. Even here though we were losing time, and after getting lost in the mist coming off Martcrag Moor, and with Steve developing a large blister it was clear that he wasn’t going to finish the Round. We gave up just before Rossett Pike and walked from there to Wasdale via Angle and Styhead Tarns.

Steve deserves congratulations for how far he got. He was well ahead of time at Threlkeld, and only lost time on the Dodds due to my ropey navigation and the heavy cloud. I reckon I ran about 25 miles before we gave up, and then we walked about 5.5 miles from there. Rachel did around 15 miles in total, but Steve had already done 14 miles before I even started, so he’d done almost 40 miles before we quit. Pretty impressive!

Afterwards we collapsed and slept for a while, then went for lunch at Wilfs in Staveley, followed by ice cream, and the long drive home. Halfway back we had to stop and sleep for an hour. We didn’t get around to blogging it, but last weekend we ran in an overnight orienteering relay on Merthyr Common. I started around 1am, and Rachel started around 2. We’re both looking forward to a weekend with normal sleep patterns, but with the Saunders Lakeland Mountain Marathon starting from Coniston next weekend, I doubt it’ll happen anytime soon.