Scafell Pike

This was by far the hardest of the Three Peaks. We had driven through the night and partly due to excitement at the great time we had done Ben in, the buzz of actually being underway and trying to sleep in a car meant that we all only grabbed a few minutes at tops. It has to be said that Tony did an amazing job of driving - he slept overnight in the car at Scafell and then drove the hire car back to Scotland next morning. He got us to Scafell under time and we started climbing at 2.15am - in the pitch dark. We decided to go the Seathwaite route as, although this was longer, it is an easier climb. We all had torch 'headlights' on and in a way this made it easier as it meant we concentrated on what was ahead of us in vision rather than the whole climb. We did well, getting to the 'hard part' after 1hr 20mins, just as it started to get light.
Then all the warnings at to why Scafell is the hardest came to light as well. There is a boulderfield at the top of Scafell which we had to clamber across, in the wet. It was very tricky and the knees started to ache, progress was very slow, we were very tired and tempers, while not frazzled made us less tolerant than normal.
It is then thatthings really got tough. We had to decend about 100m on boulders and scree, picking our way carefully. The clouds came down and we had a very sharp climb up boulders to the summit of Scafell Pike. We had lost the 45mins we had made on Ben Nevis, were hurting a lot and had to go back over the terrible boulders.
The pictures tell the story of how we were feeling. But we knew we had a job to do and still plenty of time.
The desent was also very slow and painful - but the prevailling mentality was to get down. each step was a step closer to breakfast and a cup of tea. In the end we all managed it, exhausted in 5hrs and 15mins - 45 mins over our schedule but only 15mons over the recommended time.
Mandy, Claire and Tony met us at the bottom with hot breakfast and tea - wonderful. We all bundled into two cars, Tony heading back to Scotland in the third car and we left to Snowdon, the final climb!