Safety Matters

[Stolly]

That's very true. Many that do the Fellsman are walkers. They probably had a wry smile when their rucksacks full of bulky warm gear saw them right on a difficult night whilst the runners, who possibly scorned such weighty gear, came a cropper.

The blurred vision comment is interesting. It didn't prevent the 20:20 hindsight used on this forum to give those lads a kicking who were disqualified when someone they were grouped with drifted off the back without their noticing - not great but could have happened to anyone on such a vile night with such tiredness afoot. Those lads fronted up and were really honest IIRC and got murdered on here by people that should have known better.

The issue around gear is a classic case of a rule being mistake for a principle. "I was carrying the gear set out in the rules…" ignores the principle, which is "take what will keep you safe if the shit hits the fan, and factor in the weather, terrain and duration of the event".

I didn't suffer from that 20:20 vision I hasten to add as its possible to read your post Mark and think that you were referring to me. I just looked back and apart from one long post just giving my (mainly bad ) experiences of the day (post #1635 here) the only comment I can see that I made about the guys getting befuddled and degrouping was this:

As for the staying together as a group it is worrying in those sort of conditions - one member is freezing, has shot legs and is lagging behind whilst the others are freezing while they wait. Doomed if you do and doomed if you don't almost. I don't think you should have lost sight of him though - he could have just wandered off and, well, died!.

Hardly a battering eh?