Running Ramsay’s: An Unparalleled Scottish Tradition
In 1978, a Scottish mountain runner set off on an adventure in Scotland’s Central Highlands that would affix his name in history. He was attempting to complete a “round” of 24 peaks in 24 hours, linking five mountain groups and circuiting a lake for a total of 56 miles. The route entailed 28,500 feet of vertical ascent and class-four ridge climbing, ending with the iconic Ben Nevis, known as “the roof of Britain,” as it is the highest mountain in the U.K.
At 34, Charlie Ramsay was in peak condition, having excelled at “fell” or “hill running,” as the Scots call mountain running, and having scoured these ridges for years. Originally a cyclist, he took up running during a stint in England without his bike. Back in his native Edinburgh, he began training in the nearby Pentland Hills. When I met him at his home in an Edinburgh suburb this summer, Charlie Ramsay pointed to these neon-green hills in the distance, where he still hikes religiously today. Now in his sixties, with a clean-shaven head, angular cheekbones, and an infectious high energy, Charlie exudes good health and humor. We sat in his backyard, an Ordnance Survey map as big as a tablecloth spread before us, as he talked of his famous “round.” In the neighborhood, soldiers practiced the bagpipes for an upcoming “tattoo” (parade), strains of which floated our way.
Charlie worked in the swimming-pool business—performing safety audits, coaching, training lifeguards—initially, alongside a gruff, curmudgeonly colleague. “He was old school and took umbrage to new people coming in.” The one thing they had in common was a passion for running. Charlie said, one day he proudly told his co-worker that he could run up and down the Pentland Hills in a morning. Unimpressed, the fellow replied, “That’s nothing. There’s guys running up Ben Nevis.”
“That got me going,” Charlie said. His workplace abutted Arthur’s Seat, a camel hump in the Queen’s Park, where Charlie spent his lunch breaks, gaining and losing “permutations” (elevation). He entered and ran the legendary Ben Nevis Hill Race, Scotland’s oldest and today most-popular mountain run, 14 kilometers and 4,400 vertical feet, fast enough to get the attention of those in the local Lochaber running club, who invited him to join their team. Though the Lochaber Athletic Club is based in Fort William, near the Nevis Range, a three-hour drive northwest of Edinburgh, Charlie became part of “the Edinburgh contingent,” a group of five runners that represented the club in hill races. So began his love affair with the Central Highland mountains and their unique challenges.
Such as the weather, which is often “driech” (wet): Fort William averages 200 cm of rain annually, and the summit of Ben Nevis “is in clouds” about 300 days of the year, according to one guidebook. Between Fort William and the top of “the Ben,” the temperature difference is almost 20 degrees F, so while it might be a mild 50 degrees in town, it can be freezing up there. “Lochaber is probably the only place where you can get sunstroke and hypothermia in one day,” Charlie said. In addition, being on the West Coast of Scotland, with just a few islands between them and the Atlantic, the Central Highlands take the brunt of low-pressure storms as they sweep inland. These can move in suddenly and dramatically, isolating a person in an impenetrable fog. This is how people have fatally walked off the plateau-summit of Ben Nevis, which has precipitous cliffs on both the north and south sides. Hill running, then, requires brains as much as brawn. Charlie became adept at navigating with compass and map in the pre-GPS era.
Given these conditions, the “round” Charlie conceived of and set out to do in 1978 required careful preparation. There was just one point where a crew could drive within a mile of the route. Alternatively, someone could take a train to a remote station and hike in a mile, carrying supplies. The rest was accessible only on foot. Charlie recruited teammates from Lochaber as pacers, “more men than the Queen’s army.” As British fell runner Mark Hartell explained to me: in the U.K., “…the pacers are there to carry stuff, feed you—pretty much anything except pick you up and carry you.” Charlie wanted to raise money for the Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team, so the Fort William press garnered his mission some fanfare. He set off at noon on July 8, one of the longest days of the year, with clear weather, and a full moon to light the way at night. Though Charlie had “reccied” the route, he had never put it all together before, much less under time constraints.
The Scots have a long tradition of hill running—the first Ben Nevis Hill Race was in 1899—and of tackling “rounds” of mountains. The latter perhaps is a cosmic aesthetic that has coursed in their veins since the ancient pagans erected monumental circles of stone. The way Charlie explained it, about a century ago, two explorers, Robertson and Munro, “began knocking off munros”; that is, mountains over 3,000 feet, of which, in Scotland there are 284. Within the limitations of weather windows, access to remote peaks and holidays, he said, “It became an obsession to try to do as many as possible in one go.” The first “munroist” completed a “round” of all the Scottish peaks in 1901. Today, there are over 1,000 Scottish munroists, Charlie among them. One, renowned Scottish hill runner Steven Fallon, has climbed all 284 munros 14 times, and is probably working on another “round” of them.
In 1966, two munroists, Blythe Wright and Philip Tranter, created Tranter’s Round, 19 munros in a 36-mile loop around the valley of Glen Nevis with 20,600 vertical gain. “Tranter’s” became, and still is, a hill runner’s Holy Grail. Charlie has run it “seven or eight times.” During one of these, he recalled, “I looked over at the Easains,” two peaks to the east, “and thought I could expand it.” In fact, Charlie extended Tranter’s significantly, adding five peaks across mostly off-trail wild terrain, and 20 miles, and he upped the ante by stipulating a 24-hour time limit. In short, he created his own personal race.
Starting from the Glen Nevis Youth Hostel, Charlie ran counter-clockwise, first ascending into the Mamores range, where he picked off eleven peaks in seven hours, including an out-and-back excursion on the class-four Devil’s Ridge and another out-and-back ridge climb to the peak An Gearanach. (The peaks generally have Gaelic names. When I choked on them, Charlie cordially said, “I can’t pronounce them either.”) Next, he ran the long, woolly descent through heather and bog to three peaks on the east side of Loch Treig, where night fell, and his pace slackened a bit. By dawn he had rounded the lake and was descending out of the Easains. Two-thirds of the distance was behind him, but eight peaks and the toughest climbs still loomed ahead, and just eight hours remained on his self-imposed clock. With clear weather and friends encouraging him, Charlie switched gears, accelerating through the next range, known as the Grey Corries.
Then came the steepest ascent, up Aonach Beag, the sixth-highest peak in Britain. “It’s so steep that when you need a rest, you can just lean your elbow against the mountainside,” he said. From the top of Aonach Beag is an easy lope across to neighboring Aonach Mor that takes about 20 minutes, but for this section Charlie was alone and he erred, descending unnecessarily to a col and having to expend an hour climbing back up to tag Aonach Mor. “At that point I was away with the fairies,” he recalled.
On the second-to-last peak, Carn Mor Dearg, Charlie had a mere 70 minutes to finish under 24 hours. Between him and the final munro, Ben Nevis, curved the Carn Mor Dearg Arête, a half-mile-long exposed red-granite ridge, a no-fall zone. Here, Charlie Ramsay stepped into history, dashing across the arête in 35 minutes, and sprinting down the familiar steep slopes of Ben Nevis, where his hill running had first earned him glory, 4,400 feet in 33 minutes. When he stopped at the “finish,” the Glen Nevis Youth Hostel, where he had started this epic adventure just the day before, the clock read 23:58. A new and formidable challenge entered hill-running legend: Ramsay’s Round.
When I committed to a family trip to Scotland last May, I found Ramsay’s Round on an international ultrarunning calendar, where Charlie had posted it. That linked me to the Ramsay’s Round website, where the hallowed record of successful efforts is kept. Since 1978, just 60 people have made it around Ramsay’s in 24 hours, most from the U.K., three of them women. “It was particularly good to hear of international interest regarding the round,” Charlie emailed in reply to my enquiries. “This year there have been a few injuries that have prevented success, including Anne Johnson [England’s renowned ultrarunner]…. The two recent attempts have resulted in failure due to sickness and absolute foul weather.”
Of those 60 successful finishers, I recognized one name, Mark Hartell, a British ultrarunner whom I met briefly in the dark on the 100-mile Hardrock footrace course in 2007 while I was pacing my friend Ricky Denesik. When I emailed Mark, he was in the midst of marrying and honeymooning; otherwise, he said, he might have been able to come up to Scotland to pace me. I relayed to him that I live in the Colorado Rockies, had finished Hardrock myself, albeit not very fast since I had a stomach flu, and ran the Utah mountain race Wasatch Front 100 in 26:30. Having won Hardrock and placed eighth in Wasatch, Mark was in a position to provide some perspective on Ramsay’s, which he did generously and in frank detail: “I don’t know if you know the Scottish highlands, weather conditions, etc., so if my answers seem patronising they are not intended to be. It’s just that I am assuming you are a tough mountain girl that has not been to Scotland. Hardrock is the closest comparison but I would say, mile for mile, this is tougher. The Ramsay cleaves to the ridges and summits. You will encounter deep heather in parts and a lot of rocky/scree running.” In his first effort, Mark said he “took a bad fall coming off the Mamores (clockwise) after seven or eight hours that gashed my knee and ended the attempt. My successful round was solo and unsupported…. It was close to the longest day of the year (minimal darkness) and very hot. I ate very little, got a lot dehydrated on the first day and had really sore soles on my feet. The final descent of the Ben was purgatory.”
“The route is stunning,” he said, and “likely to be and feel wilder and more remote than you will have encountered on Wasatch or Hardrock, etc. Wet rock will slow the attempt down considerably, e.g. the Carn Mor Dearg arête scramble can be awful in cloud and rain.”
Mark relied solely on map and compass: “I am a luddite, so no GPS.” He wrote, though there are “generally obvious trails along the ridges, some of your routes on and off tops will be…completely trackless sessions. Unless you know how to navigate on contours and with compass in very low visibility, you could have a lot of problems.”
Mark has run the three U.K. rounds, England’s Bob Graham Round, the Paddy Buckley Round in Wales, and Ramsay’s. He later wrote, “I don't want to put you off—in fact, I think it’s super exciting that you know about the round and are prepared to have a go. I do want you to go into it eyes wide open, though—of the three big rounds, it’s regarded as the toughest and it is the most difficult to support.” He then suggested that I consider breaking the route up into a three-day excursion, staying in “bothies” (huts).
Though my ego bristled at Mark’s advice, he is arguably one of the most accomplished British fell runners ever, and now, with hindsight, I see its kindness and wisdom. Who knows? He might have saved my life. Though I am wont to venture on my own all-day solo rounds of the San Juan Mountains, I have also been known to take wrong ridges or drainages and to straddle downfall for miles, having missed an obvious trail in clear daylight, map in hand. Mark’s cautions gave me pause. Thereafter, I began seeking local pacers in earnest. Not surprisingly, throngs of runners were not answering my call in the fell-running cyber world, anxious to schlep my food and clothes, slog up and down scree and through bog in the dark, and keep me on course, so that I could be number 61. It was an almost ludicrous request. All that I could offer in exchange was the same hospitality in Colorado, since I live just a mile from the Hardrock course and could guide, pace, or crew a racer on this end.
In July, word came from Charlie that, within days of each other, four Scotsmen joined the magic list. The first two, Alan Smith and Bruce Poll, saw a weather window and pounced, departing at 5 p.m. They finished in 22:47, enjoying “fantastic” conditions, the only mishap being that a wild boar apparently destroyed a cache. Alan found and packed out an antler as a Ramsay Trophy. “Totally elated,” they recapped.
The other two, though more prepared, experienced worse weather. Following Charlie’s schedule, Peter Duggan and Jon Gay, left at noon, going “anti-clockwise.” In his excellent blog account, Peter wrote, “Jon and I were almost immediately subjected to a heavy shower as we ran up the forestry track towards Mullach nan Coirean,” the first peak of the Mamores. Then the weather improved and by dark they had gained an hour on Charlie’s time in the mountains east of Loch Treig. Suddenly, though, conditions became “cold, wet, and windy,” and they were “quickly spending that precious time we’d banked with half a sole off one of Jon’s new shoes and needing repair, more clothing required for everyone and tortuous navigation….”
Though this was primarily Peter’s attempt and Jon’s plan was to pace him around the lake as far as Fersit Dam, the one easy access point, where other pacers would take over, Jon decided to keep going. In his classic exuberant style, Peter continued, “Now, while I’d been feeling so strong and full of beans throughout the Mamores that I’d been (prematurely) imagining myself telling folk, ‘Och, it wasn’t really that hard’…I’d also been conscious at times that my legs felt quite dead from the knees down and just weren’t driving me on the climbs like they should be.” Wondering if he had “overcooked” his “recovery/training/taper cycle” in the five weeks since he finished the 95-mile West Highland Way, Peter “began to struggle,” while Jon kept getting stronger and faster. Before dawn, Peter fell down a “short cliff,” unharmed. As they approached the daunting slope of Aonach Beag, Peter sensed his round “slipping away” and told Jon to go on ahead and complete his own. “So of course he protested that he’d feel guilty, but I said not half as guilty as I’d feel if he didn’t get it now and that was that!” In the end, Jon finished in 23:07, Peter in 23:50. Peter concluded, “As for ‘my first and last Ramsay’s Round,’ that means exactly what it says and, while I hope to run further Tranter’s Rounds in both summer and winter and could be persuaded to pace someone for part of the big one, I’ve no intention of ever confronting Charlie Ramsay’s monster in its entirety again….”
In July I wrote to an email contact on the Lochaber Athletic Club website. As it turned out, I had written John Hepburn of Fort William, who manages the website, but who is also a serious hill runner and said he might be willing to help. Shortly before I boarded the plane for Scotland, John wrote to say Peter Duggan and Jon Gay were “keen” to assist my attempt, and John offered, “I'm happy to do any donkey work required, supply drops and meeting up at points, but these guys have the mountain experience on Ramsay's for keeping you right on the hill.” However, they would both be available on only four days. “We could be working to fairly fine tolerances,” Peter wrote.
Most Ramsay’s finishers, including all the women, have run it clockwise, getting the arête and the big climbs out of the way when they were still fresh, but Charlie, Mark, Peter, and Jon had gone anti-clockwise. On this point, Mark said, “I’m a traditionalist and it’s the way Charlie went.” In an email, Peter weighed the pros and cons, and concluded: “…you can't escape the big climbs either way round. They just come in slightly different places. ACW has a logical sense of climax, culminating with the Ben.”
I arrived in Edinburgh on Aug. 2nd and the next day enjoyed a delightful lunch with Charlie and his wife, Mary, also a hill walker. He gave me some maps and both wished me well, “fingers crossed.” I remember Charlie saying there would be “no time for phaffing about” during the round, as in, no lollygagging. My family and I drove west, savoring Scotland: white houses, dark slate roofs, the smell of coal burning in fireplaces, orange Highland cattle with forelocks covering their eyes, ivy-coated country homes, rivers the color of whiskey, white waterfalls in ribbons on the green hills, perfect sunny weather.
As our tour ended, we drove to Fort William and glimpsed the massive hulk of Ben Nevis. My family left me in the valley below, Glen Nevis, where John Hepburn met me at the Youth Hostel, the start of Ramsay’s, and we ran up to the first peak of the round. A slight freckled man in impeccable garb, John led the way along a forest road and then straight uphill through dense ferns and heather, setting a brisk pace. He is a beautiful, efficient runner and like most Scots, it seems, explodes on the uphill. We made it to the top in Charlie’s time, but just.
The next day I met Peter Duggan at the Ben Nevis Inn, a 200-year-old stone barn converted into a restaurant. With short grey stubble for hair and piercing eyes, Peter was at first quite reserved and serious. He asked how I’d found out about Ramsay’s, and when I told him the random truth, he said with a loaded look, “It’s quite coveted, you know. Not many people have done it.” I could tell Peter was sizing me up, and rightly so, as I wouldn’t want to be out on Ramsay’s pacing a nutcase. He showed me his self-made map with the exact GPS lines of his successful Ramsay’s in a red dotted loop. We talked about various scenarios of my round, and hatched a plan: John would take me through the first eight peaks of the Mamores; Peter would hike up from his town and take over for the last three and run me around the lake, over the three Loch Treig peaks; Jon would meet us at Fersit Dam, around 11 p.m., and lead me back west over the last ten peaks. “You can’t take your foot off the pedal,” Peter warned.
We set out on a “reccie” run up the valley, Peter pointing out and describing one peak after the next, with amazing precision: “If you climb directly along the ridge, there’s more scrambling; if you go on the east side, though you have to drop down and climb back up, you actually save five minutes.” Four hours later, we stopped at his car, and he said, “I’m feeling rather fat and out of shape.”
Jon Gay was away south attempting the Bob Graham Round, and a low pressure had moved in, so I was in a holding pattern. People of various nationalities left the Youth Hostel each morning on their quest to climb Ben Nevis. I’d watch them outlining the zigzag path until they went out of sight over the Ben’s broad shoulder. They returned, cheeks aglow, spirits high. “Did you climb Ben Nevis?” they’d ask, and I’d shake my head. In the museum, I learned of all the publicity stunts and exploits on top of the Ben: a tea party, “extreme ironing”; someone hauled up and played an organ, and someone else summitted in a Model T.
On our start day, a dreary rain fell out of a black sky, and I postponed. The next day was the last possible day I could attempt it, as after that John had commitments. He and a fourth pacer, Neil Arnott, and I went for a short jaunt up to Dun Deardail, once an ancient fort, now a sunken circle covered in grass and flowers. With a good view of the Ben, they analyzed the various lines down it. Neil said he broke his nose running off the Ben. John said he once stepped in bog up to his waist. “You never know when it’s going to take your weight or not.” I said I couldn’t track my splits because I didn’t have a proper watch. John gave me a funny look: “You don’t have a cell phone or a watch?” I think they were expecting me to be top tier, Diana Finkel or Darcie Africa, and were realizing they got a country bumpkin. “I really am a runner,” I laughed.
The next morning, we met at the Youth Hostel. The weather was calm but grey, with clouds covering the mountains. When we set off at 9 a.m., John, Neil and I were all business. I admired the quartzite summit of Stop Ban and how quickly the guys could descend rough sections. Charlie said the most technical climbing is The Devil’s Ridge, between the second and third peaks, which you have to out and back, but I have no recollection of it. We were gaining minutes on Charlie’s time. On the other out-and-back ridge to An Gearanach, the fog enclosed us, so that we had only occasional glimpses of our exposure high above the green slopes. There was a tense second when John slipped and caught himself.
We were on schedule and met Peter around 5 p.m., who had hiked up 3,000 feet and waited on a ridge. The four of us climbed the next peak, energized by Peter’s humor. Then John and Neil set off to run six more miles down through the boggy glen, to prepare a “kit” for us, pick up Jon Gay and drive 45 minutes around to Fersit Dam to hike in a mile and meet us by 10 p.m. Peter maintained a running monologue the entire five and half hours we were together, of which I never tired. He admired the conical Binnein Beag, “a pretty mountain from every side,” but called the next one, Sgurr Eilde Mor, “a real swine.” As usual this climb was straight up and trail-less. I backed off the pace, while Peter pointed out the tiny green five-fingered flowers that grow only at that elevation. “I don’t know why they call them Ladies’ Mountain Mantle, something to do with ladies’ things.” He warned me about ticks, as they carry Lime Disease, saying they were very small and that he found one once on his bum.
Coming off this last peak of the Mamores, we enjoyed clear views to Loch Treig, a royal-blue isosceles; a river; and a maze of drainages with islands of purplish-orange boggy vegetation. Two red bucks trotted past, and Peter remembered we were supposed to get permission to cross there, since it was “stalking” (hunting) season. The slope was long and grassy and we loped down it. The heather offered springy footing, though we had to watch for holes in the ground, and the bog was like wet cement. We bottomed out and crossed the river. Soon we joined an old road around the lake where I stepped up the pace, taking advantage of the easy footing. I had a 40-minute lead on Charlie and was having fun. Peter refueled on his Lucozade Sport and Jelly Babies, I downed a turkey sandwich, and then we began the three Loch Treig peaks, which were shrouded in clouds. The first was a long easy ascent, but the back of it was almost a vertical wall. In the last light, I looked down into the next valley with a silver stream snaking through it, and I thought I was in the fantasy world of Lord of the Rings. It was wilder and remoter, as Mark Hartell said. In the moments that I stopped, however, Peter had somehow covered half the descent and was moving in time lapse, getting smaller every second. We both labored a bit on ascending Chno Dearg, where we were suddenly enveloped in rain, mist and a shrill wind. Peter got out the compass and started reading numbers aloud. “Fuck, that’s not north. What was I thinking? That’s north!” From there, I knew we headed straight west for the third peak, but I was amazed to find that what I instinctually thought was west was actually east. Out of the mist and twilight we noticed a dark shape coming towards us, a lone walker. He passed us wearing a big grin and said only, “Fine night for a walk.” Peter cracked up, and I said, “That was surreal.”
Peter found a time-saving route off the third peak, although he wasn’t sure if it would go because of certain cliffs. Headlamps on, and below the clouds, we picked our way between them and soon knew we were free and clear. By then we could make out the three headlamps of John, Neil and Jon, waiting at the dam. We ran for a mile in a train track, climbed a rung ladder up onto Fersit Dam and soon joined the other three.
I’d heard about the midges or no-see-ums, but nothing could prepare me for their intensity at my one-and-only “aid station.” The guys wore head nets, with mesh so thin their faces were barely recognizable. The midges were so thick that my arms parted them like curtains. I still had a 30-minute lead on Charlie, but lost about 10 changing and preparing for the last leg with Jon. “Keep on the way you’re going and you’ll get it” were Peter’s last words as we started up the Easains.
Jon and I had met for the first time that morning and, between my fatigue and his focus on navigating, we exchanged few words. It was calm and even warm at first. I mentioned the rough patch of weather Peter and I had been through after Chno Dearg, and he replied, “Really?” About fifteen minutes later, we were back in it: slanting mist and wind. It was nearly midnight, I’d been going for 15 hours, and suddenly I was stumbling over rocks, trying to keep up with Jon, who was preoccupied himself. One time I looked up and saw total white mist and darkness, no Jon. I hollered over the wind, and it turned out he was not far in front at all.
The first peak of the Easains has a football-field summit with no features, occasional weak trails, and a small cairn marking the indistinct top, which Jon had to find. He was monitoring our distance traveled, elevation, bearings, the GPS, map and compass. “Can you count off paces?” he asked. “Every right step. Tell me when you get to 550.” This simple task was beyond me. We were running and hiking sporadically, and occasionally he’d drop down on his knees to get a bearing. “That’s 500, more or less,” I said. Finally, we stopped at a cairn. “I’m 99 percent sure this is the summit,” Jon said. (The GPS later showed he was right.) Both Jon and Peter are sailors and have at times thrown themselves into racing, so they know navigating well beyond the classes most hill runners take. In Scotland, there are even combined sailing-running endurance races, in which one sails to an island, runs up a peak, sails to the next, runs around it, etc., for three days.
We had to run down scree out of the Easains and then find the right drainage over to the Grey Corries. Sheep and sheep shit were everywhere, and I was sure I would get giardia from taking water out of the streams. (I didn’t.) Jon could see I was slowing down, so at the foot of Stop Ban, he offered me some coffee: powdered instant in a baggy. I knocked some into my mouth and gagged it down. The next two climbs were steep, long, and arduous. I was doing the drunken sailor walk, clinging onto clumps of grass to stop myself from falling backwards.
The four Corries offer a runnable ridge. On his round, Charlie got here on a clear, dry morning and made excellent time. One guide book calls the Grey Corries “a glorious stravaig” (saunter), but this was not to be my experience of them. Jon and I, now in the middle of the night, were exposed to a constant 30-mile-an-hour wind on the ridge, with heavier gusts and driving mist. At one point it began fully raining and I worried that my headlamp would fizzle out. My morale sank. “If you’re not comfortable with this, we can go down,” I shouted. “No, no, this is good fun,” Jon replied. The temperature dropped. Once, when Jon paused to study the map, I noticed his eyelashes were coated in ice. The foam padding in my Camelbak had absorbed the moisture and was now freezing the muscles in my back. Rocks there are like rocks in a riverbed at home: The mossy growth makes them grippy when dry, but “slick as snot” when wet. The pretty white quartzite that I had admired just hours ago on Stop Ban now became my nemesis: it was slipperiest. At one point I went down hard on one butt cheek and struggled to get up. I couldn’t run; I trotted. Jon seemed unfazed by the conditions, moving along as though he wasn’t touching the ground, though he did say it was “getting cold up here, so dig deep and let’s go.” The peaks were black cones like gloomy ship prows. Sometimes on top the two green lights of a sheep’s eyes startled me. “Don’t step to your right. There’s a cliff there,” Jon warned. When we finally descended out the Corries, a grey dawn was breaking, and I was behind Charlie.
In the dawn light, with the weather clearing, we stood at the base of Aonach Beag and I had to smile when I looked up it: a green tower. It was so steep that I could only side step and switchback, but soon we were on top and fighting the wind over to Aonach Mor. Peter had said from Aonach Mor I should plan on three hours for the climb up Carn Mor Dearg, the arête to Ben Nevis and the final descent. I had just two hours, sixteen minutes left. “I’m not going to make it,” I told Jon and stopped to shake out the rocks that had been in my shoes for seven hours. “It’s possible,” Jon said, sharing some of his Pyrenees honey. We topped out on Carn Mor Dearg three minutes before Charlie. Peter had emphasized how exceptional Charlie’s 35-minute arête and 33-minute descent were. Never having seen the arête and feeling somewhat inebriated, I wasn’t about to try to emulate him.
Now, I took my time, enjoying climbing the arête and the finest weather of the whole round. Beyond my heels I saw the vast green valley a few thousand feet below. I had a few “whoa” moments, without three points of contact, but the rock was bomber, unlike the chaucy rubble in Colorado. I remember sensing bands of energy coursing past me that curled and snapped like flags, and finding that interesting. Coming off the arête, we encountered two figures in the clouds, who, I was amazed to discover, were John and Neil. They had climbed the Ben, expecting to race down it with me to the finish. As far as they could tell, it had been a calm, clear night. We summitted the Ben at exactly 24 hours. Though I felt like I had let everybody down and I was sorry that it was over, when we came out of the “clag” (clouds), the morning views of Loch Linnhe and mountains to the horizon were glorious, and I wanted to take them in, perhaps never having the chance to be there again. The guys absolutely eschewed the tourist path, leading the direct vertical descent down the famous Red Burn and Green Wall, all the while discussing which lines were faster. Had I known Peter was waiting for us above the Red Burn or that my family had driven back to meet me at the finish, I might have moved along. Peter’s banter quickly dismissed my solemnity. Then we rejoined the path below, moving against the tide of people heading up, which Neil referred to as “the circus.” Two guys hefted bikes and one a unicycle up the trail, intending to ride them down.
It was bittersweet. I had finished Ramsay’s, but it would only ever be an “attempt.” Charlie said he didn’t know how many people had attempted his round. Only the sub-24s go on the website. The guys were kind. Neil said it was a significant achievement, and that I had seen more of Scotland’s hills in a day than most Scots see in a lifetime. In a later email, Jon suggested that I had the women’s anti-clockwise record. “Think the time aspect is academic, you achieved, and evidently enjoyed, Scotland's most well-known round.” For some perspective, the men’s Ramsay’s record is 18:23, and the women’s is 20:24, both set in 1989. Runners have expanded Ramsay’s to 28 peaks and are vying for 30 in a day, and four have rounded it in the winter, though not under 24 hours, yet. Although I had long forgotten about the clock, Peter noted my finish at the Youth Hostel: 25:24. My inclination was to beat myself up, but, in reality, I’d been extremely privileged to have had a guided tour of Ramsay’s with four excellent Scotsmen, and, apart from the wee hours of the night, the experience had been unparalleled.
I continue to get the odd update from Charlie of other people’s attempts. In September, Charlie wrote: “Mary and I were in Lochaber last weekend, wall to wall blue sky for three days. Where did you get it wrong?”
xxxx
