From Roybridge, towards the Grey Corries

My report on this long-awaited go at fell running in Scotland in the beginning of July is a bit overdue, but I’ve been quite busy with my travels and work. You can expect some more updates in the coming weeks though, if everything goes well… The plan for this trip emerged maybe a year ago, although I can’t quite remember how. I had discussed it with Ulrike a few times though. I’ve done some of the Mamores — a circular range of ten great peaks in the Grampian Mountains — before, but not all of them. The Wikipedia article claims that all ten are munros, but I read from somewhere that Am Bodach had been reclassified as a munro top. Well, not a big deal, it’s a great range anyway! We were certainly not the first ones to do them, as I discovered the route from Steven Fallon’s guide. The total distance is listed as 34km and the height gain as 3,400m. However, we ended up doing considerably more distance, and some more height as well, albeit partly due to some navigational problems in the beginning (which in turn were due to recent forestry works in the area). In any case, once we got going, the route was easy to follow and we didn’t encounter any major problems. We ran the flats and downhill, but there were some steep uphill bits and even scrambling, so this wasn’t running at all times by any means, and it did take us 10h in total. Ulrike didn’t really enjoy some of the downhill and the boggy bits, I could’ve done those a bit faster, but I struggled with some of the uphill myself, and we were both pretty dead when we reached the last peak. Still managed a good run back to the car. I reckon that this could be done in about 8h though. My quads were still sore four days after the run, so clearly I need to train this type of running more.

As to the details, the total distance covered was 43,28km with approximately 3,500m height gain. Unfortunately my Garmin somehow managed to lose the data even though it recorded it all fine on the day. I’m gutted, but fortunately Ulrike recorded the run as well (but started the Garmin a bit late), see the data here. The elevation profile below is also from her Garmin.

Mamores Run Elevation Profile

Posing with Ulrike before the Mamores run

All in all I enjoyed this experiment in fell running very much, although it was rather harder work than I had thought. The weather was fortunately very good: not too hot, but great visibility. I’m certainly keen on doing something similar again, but it’s another question when I actually get a chance to do that. The trip wasn’t all about running the Mamores though, as we had three days in total (we rented a car to drive to Scotland and around, featured in the photo on the left). The idea was that we’d hopefully have decent weather on at least one of the days. As it turned out, the weather was pretty good for all three! On the first day we did a good hike and grabbed all of the Grey Corries (Garmin data here), which I hadn’t done before, and on the last day we did a recovery hike of sorts, grabbing two lone munros, Chno Dearg & Stob Coire Sgriodain (Garmin data here). The first hike was 24,12km in total with 1,803m height gain, and the last day’s hike was 17,23km with just 957m height gain. I forgot my camera on the first day and I was certainly not going to carry my SLR on the Mamores run, so I only got photos from the third day. We did have Ulrike’s compact camera on the other days though, and I carried it (and took some photos) on the run. Photos from the whole trip can be found at my gallery. This trip takes my munro count to 69 — I’ve got another 214 of these fine Scottish peaks to climb, although I have no real aspirations of completing the list.

Nice terrain for running, eh?

I had the chance to try out some new gear on this trip as well. It was the first time that I used my new Osprey Aether 70 backpack, in preparation for my Pyrenees trip (report forthcoming), but also a tester for my new Camelback Octane XCT hydration pack, which fits 3 litres of liquid. I used the latter for the actual Mamores run, and I fell in love with the pack! This was also the first real tester for my pair of La Sportiva Crossover GTX mountain running shoes, although I had used them on a few runs/hikes before. All the gear performed well, and I hope to post some brief reviews of each item soon. I do prefer hitting the hills with light gear and opting for speed, as I discovered in the Pyrenees where I had the complete opposite experience with about 18kg backpack and full camping gear. It’s a very different style of exploring the mountains, although each does have its advantages.

Another summit conquered!