24 hour musings (Running)

Thursday 19 February 2009 07:47AM

It’s a week since my aborted attempt to do the Ramsay Round on skis and I’ve been mulling it over a bit. The obvious challenge for me is to do a sub 24 hour Ramsay Round in proper winter conditions, something that no one has yet managed although several people have tried in the past, and at least 3 other people are trying this winter… A winter Ramsay is something I’ve been thinking of for 4 years, initially conceiving of it as something to try wearing metal studded orienteering shoes, with lightweight crampons for more gnarly sections, and only this year beginning to think that it would be an amazing thing to try and do on lightweight ski mountaineering race skis.

So does it seem possible, with the insight of one attempt, to travel the whole round at sufficient speed to dip under the 1 day mark, in full winter conditions? I got to the northern Stob Ban (there are two Stob Bans on the route, one above the Leacach bothy in the northern section of the route, and one in the Mamores) going clockwise in seven and a half hours, which sounds reasonably fast, but a 24 hour schedule suggests just five and a half hours for this section, quite a shortfalling. It would be easy to abandon the idea of a full winter traverse at this point, reasoning that it’s just too much faster to be realistic, but it’s helpful in situations like these to break down just where and how you were too slow, and to add up the potential improvements with a large dose of optimism. When I ran the Cuillin I had a similar situation after my first attempt, running 3.59 in good weather when the record was 3.32. People I spoke to suggested I was stupid to go back and try again, it was clear I wouldn’t be fast enough, but there were enough things that didn’t go quite right on my first attempt to convince me I could go a lot faster on a second, and so it proved.

Last Wednesday night I was skiing virtually onsight – obviously I knew Ben Nevis well, but I had only done the traverse from there to the Aonach Mor once before (and in summer), and the rest of the way over the grey corries I had never been on at all. So much of the time I had the map and compass out, costing me a lot of time. In addition it was dark and the moon was hidden by clouds, meaning that a lot of the time I was unable to see more than 20 or 30 metres ahead, so I spent a lot of time trying to ski ground that would have been quicker to walk/run, walking when it would’ve been quicker to ski, and endlessly switching between the two. In addition I often missed the best ski line on descents, most notably coming off Carn Mor Dearg where I must’ve put my skis on and off 3 or 4 times trying to summon the courage to ski the steep hard neve, unsure of how big the cliffs I could see at the limit of my headtorch were. Looking back from the climb up Aonach Mor it was obvious that there was a much faster way to descend on skis than the one I’d chosen (which was the same way as I’d once ran it in summer) and I lost 40 minutes on this section alone, disappointing when on paper it would appear to be somewhere it would be possible to win time on skis. Finally snow conditions weren’t ideal, it was often quite icy and, while there was cover down to sea level the cover up high was often too thin to ski fast. With more knowledge of the route (from reccying or previous attempts), better snow conditions and with a big bright moon, or sunlight, I think I could go a lot faster.

But two and a half hours faster (a 33% improvement), then keeping the same pace for another 18 hours? It sounds preposterous, but then all the best adventures always are…