Helixr's Three Peaks Challenge

Scotland

Trains, planes and automobiles carried a plucky team of Helixr staff (plus three of their adventurous children) up to Glasgow on Friday 21st June. While Ravi headed up with a team to Fort William in the hire car, Max picked the rest of the gang up in the minibus from Glasgow airport. Laura drove us to Fort William, stopping to take in the beautiful, moody Loch Lomond at Luss, and we took time to pop into the visitor centre at historic Glencoe. We checked into the Bank Street Lodge in Fort William, refreshed ourselves and headed to the local Wetherspoons for dinner before a (reasonably) early night.

Ben Nevis

After an early start and a decent breakfast, we headed to the foothills of Ben Nevis. The highest mountain in Britain at 4,413ft, and 10.5 miles in total of steep, rough and rocky terrain. We set off together and naturally fell in with those walking at a similar pace as we climbed higher. The path was quite narrow and there were a surprisingly large number of people walking both up and down. The weather was warm and the views spectacular as we climbed up, changing to chilly when we hit the clouds and freezing when we arrived at the top - there were even patches of snow around. It was impossible to stay at the top for too long as it was just so cold, and there was no view at all due to the cloud, but it was worth it!

England - the detour …

Elated but exhausted, we changed our clothes, refuelled ourselves and headed off on the 244 mile journey to Scafell Pike. Sadly, an hour into our journey things conspired against us as the road ahead was closed due to an accident which mean a detour of 2 hrs +. This meant we would be starting Scafell Pike much later than we had planned … we stopped at a lovely pub in Tyndrum to decide what to do.

As we had always planned to complete Scafell Pike before it got dark, we all agreed it would be too dangerous to attempt it - it's the shortest but the steepest of the three peaks at 3,209ft and the path is the least well marked. We just couldn't take any risks.

We carried on towards Wales and planned to start Snowdon early.

Wales - Mt Snowdon

Arriving in Llanberis at 4.30am, our tired legs started the very steep climb towards the summit. As with Ben Nevis, we all naturally fell into pace with walking partners and encountered wider paths and fewer people. The cloud descended upon us quite early on, so unfortunately there was little or no view but that didn't stop our determination. 3560ft and 9 miles in total, the climb was less challenging in some places and more challenging in others than Ben Nevis - it was also wetter! Soaked, weary but with an enormous sense of achievement , we all descended safely and made our way back to the comfort of home and a good night's sleep!