Time should not be wasted, its a precious commodity, so as I had a gap of 5 hours between jobs that gave yours truly
enough time to head off and experience the first winter day on the mountains. Mrs Bear was the obvious dog of choice as she would need no monitoring other than making sure she didn't over exert herself
and so we rapidly made our way to the summit of Corn Du which was hidden in the mist and ice.
Mrs Bear made it first, yours truly felt dreadful and was already planning a shorter route due to fatigue put down to poor sleep and heavy cold.
Pen Y Fan was bagged, again yours truly was not feeling the love in the room and took a lot of self control not to pull the eject handle and bale off down the track back to the car.
Mrs Bear posed at the summit stone
and we headed towards the next target, Fan y Big.
The clouds cleared but my mood didn't
and the summit suddenly hove into clear view which really didn't help.
Looking back from whence we came was not helping as the way home was back that way via a shortcut 100metres or so shy of the summit.
Really not happy face.
Trying to convince myself that all this was fun face.
The summit and we were hit by a 50mph wind that was a force to be reckoned with, the only good thing about it was it would be behind us as we headed back.
The sun picked out the path back and feeling really tired the plod to the almost top began.
All sorts of promises were made, and bargains set, the best one being that although I had a full pack on with all sorts of goodies to eat, if I made it to the top instead of taking the escape route just ahead I would forgo the veg curry and rice in my bag and reward myself with a bacon and egg buttie from the van in the car park. Each step added a rasher, or beans, tomatoes and became a full cooked English in my head. I could not understand why I felt so rubbish, Kilimanjaro didn't seem as hard as this.
Almost at the top a man appeared and asked the quickest way to Brecon, momentarily disorientated I almost pointed in the wrong direction before answering air ambulance and enquiring how had he got to where we were. He had walked up the ridge, I advised he walk back down again then. He didn't follow my advice and set off from whence I came.
Summit bagged again I felt somewhat better
and decided that enough was enough the car park was 1.5 miles away and the lump in front could be avoided on the basis I had done enough to get the reward of the bacon and egg buttie.
All downhill from here and this was the point that I discovered why I had felt so truly awful. Nothing to do with colds or feeling rough, nothing to do with the lack of calories consumed since I had started or the weight of my pack which I had spent many a step calculating and recalculating the total weight...2kg water 1.5 kg food....2 kg spare clothes.....survival gear and shelter1.5 kg....and so on ....no it all had to do with time.
Yours truly along with Mrs Bear had just taken on 4 peaks and a gnats whisker under 6 miles in suboptimal weather in totally surprising time of 2 hours 37 minutes, with 2 hours 8 minutes of that spent actually moving, the rest being spent taking pictures, falling over in the wind or leaning over hands on knees gasping like a guppy for air.
To the victor the spoils.......Mrs Bear one large hot dog no onions, yours truly a bacon and egg roll and 2 cups of tea while contemplating a slower walk next time.
