Scotland Outdoors

What a great success! We had glorious weather for the UK's first wheelchair-led climb up Ben Nevis on Saturday.

On Friday I travelled up from Glasgow to Fort William with Ann Ward from Capability Scotland. While we made our way north Ken Hames, whose idea resulted in the Ben Nevis Challenge, was being interviewed on the radio for BBC Radio Scotland, Scotland Live and later on in the day on Newsdrive.

I was so excited meeting everyone again and also about the climb. On Friday night Ken gave everyone a brief about what to expect on Ben Nevis the following day. He warned that there was still snow on the top!

I was up at 5am on Saturday morning to get prepared. We gathered for a health and safety briefing with Ken. He suggested that because of the hot weather I try and get to half-way point and rest there because it would take me longer and the uneven terrain would tire me quickly.

I set off at 8.30am with volunteers and they helped me along with Azura Warwick and Olivia Straker, my fellow companions who have trekked with me across the Andes. It was blistering hot already and I was finding it difficult to carry my 2 litres of water in my day sack because of my poor balance and co-ordination.

The terrain was very rocky so I sometimes had to crawl over the rocky path because my balance couldn't cope with the terrain. While I was walking, I saw able-bodied people sitting down taking a rest. I said to them, “Come on, let's move on! If I'm coping, you can easily do it too.” At times I needed two people on either side of me to help me walk because crawling was impossible and I didn't want to injure my knees.

Finally, I reached the halfway point. It was already midday. I was relieved to have got that far, but the sense of achievement was much more. I didn't continue to the top because the heat would have taken hold of me, and the time-limit for the event meant I needed to be off the mountain by 5pm.

I waited at the halfway point for the first wheelchair to come down. The first team to make it to the top consisted of James Foster, Pete Thompson, Nigel Green, Mike Vernon, Rob Dagg and Ross Lewis from the Lombard team. They managed to reached the top of the summit of Ben Nevis in 5 hours and 45 minutes.

Ross told me later it had been a lot tougher than he'd expected. He said, “The only bad part was that we wanted to do it in the 5 hour mark. I remember being on the 3rd zig zag on the route and it being 11:00am, giving us only 15 minutes to finish and I knew it was impossible. Still, when we did finish and Ken later told us that we averaged 3 metres every minute, I was still blown away by that.”

By 3pm I started to make my way down the mountain. It was a lot easier than going up however I still needed some assistance so my friend Ruth Moody helped me down to make sure that I didn't fall.

I felt frustrated at times because there was a lot of walkers behind me and they did not have any patience, they wanted to barge right past so at times Ruth and I had to say, “Wait until I reach a flat ground then I'll let you by." Even on my way down off the mountain I had to move on my bottom because my balance couldn't handle the terrain.

At last I reached the bottom by 6.45pm. It had taken much longer than anticipated. I was relieved I didn't encounter any injuries or anything but my legs and feet were aching. I felt a great sense of achievement made it to the halfway point because to me that is a huge feat in itself.

Well, I have thoroughly enjoyed sharing my experiences of preparing for a challenge on this scale, and thank you for taking the time to read my diary entries and post comments. I would like to congratulate everyone who participated. Who knows this challenge maybe repeated? Keep an eye on my Bebo page to see what's next - I'm going now to search for my next adventure.

Bye for now,
Julie

Page first published on Wednesday 18th June 2008
Page last updated on Thursday 24th July 2008