Originally Posted by IainR
Excellent photos Bill
There is a possible attempt going this w/e, not me as it's my wife's 40th shhh
Re direction I was chatting last night to someone who has had contact with both Mrs Tranter (His Mum) and forgive the lack of knowledge Mr Bligth? who accompanied the first round and they were told A/C is the favoured reconised route.
So in which direction was the Record?
I'm not sure which way Mark McDermott went but 12:50 is pretty fast
Bill
On Sunday 1 February, while the rest of Britain was snowed under, Jon Gay, Paul Manson and I completed a Tranter's round, starting with Ben Nevis. We started at the Glen Nevis Youth Hostel at 6:02am, completing the round in 18 hours 59 minutes and 6 seconds.
Despite forecasts of a 90% chance of cloud-free Munros, we encountered near whiteout conditions on the Aonachs and Grey Corries, with 40mph+ winds from the East/Southeast. The snow was plentiful but hard, giving reasonable conditions underfoot. I wore six layers, including a warm belay jacket, and two hats. The lightweight running crampons that Paul and I had recently bought came in particularly handy.
Upon reaching the summit of the easternmost Stob Ban at 1.33pm the sun poked through over Loch Trieg to the East and the cloud lifted long enough for us to look back West across the Mamores. With the wind dropping, we had hopes of finishing before midnight.
Our efforts upwind over the Grey Corries, however, must have taken their toll since we slowed over Binnean Beag and Sgurr Eilde Mor, reaching the latter summit at 4.32pm. A plod up to Sgor Eilde Beag to avoid the cornice running along the ridge northwest saw us reach Binnean Mor just before nightfall.
From Am Bodach onwards the occasional glimpse of the guiding lights of Fort William and Kinlochleven were welcome reassurance. By this time Paul’s feet were almost completely numb, so we tried untying his frozen laces – with little success. We considered peeing on them but luckily for Paul we were all too dehydrated.
My brother Jon’s local knowledge came to the fore for the descent off the Devil’s ridge and on to Stob Ban, which he claims to have summited dozens of times. Mullach nan Coirean seemed to drag on forever despite Jon’s insistence that it was ‘really only an extension of the previous hill’; and the descent through the forest was distinctly less than the dream that I had been anticipating for the previous 18 hours.
We hurtled down Glen Nevis so fast that we missed the turnoff to the youth hostel and had to double back up the road, with Jon winning the final sprint to the phone box. None of us remembered to take a victorious picture, still less strike a victorious pose – and sleep was the grand finale.
Dan Gay
Well done Jon, Dan and Paul, a real achievement in difficult conditions.
Yiannis
Well done Dan, sounds like you had a great day
Bill
well done. a real winter round in good time. did you take any pics?
Thanks. No decent photos i'm afraid; only some poor before and after pictures. There was no way we could have got a camera out on the Aonachs and Grey Corries, and we were too knackered to think about it afterwards. I'll do a fuller report in due course and maybe put the pix up somewhere.
An impressive time, especially given the conditions. Well done!
Please elaborate. I saw some on the Needlesport site but they were out of stock and I've not tried since.The lightweight running crampons that Paul and I had recently bought came in particularly handy.
Rob
Me and Paul used Katoola Microspikes, which were light, very quick to get on and off your fell shoes, and pretty good on most terrain. We reckon we wore them about half the time. They take a bit of getting used to compared with ordinary crampons since there's no points at the side, so traversing steep slopes is a bit more tricky. The points are also a lot smaller than normal crampons so you have to be a bit careful.
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