Last Wednesday, Alex and I kicked off our training and kit preparation to begin the long journey towards climbing Mount Elbrus and eventually the Seven Summits.
As some of you are aware the Seven Summits is a dream I have had for a very long time, ever since I started mountaineering, a dream that both Owen, before his accident and Alex both shared with me. Me and Owen set out to prove that the Seven Summits, while a huge mountaineering challenge is not reserved for those big famous mountaineers and can be achieved by regular people willing to put in the time, effort and money to make it work.
As I have mentioned before all of my Seven Summits posts, leading up to the climbs and of the climbs themselves are going to serve as a place to put down all of my research and planning for everyone to be able to access them. It is worth mentioning now that THESE ARTICLES ARE NOT A TRAINING MANUAL, THEY ARE NOT DESIGNED TO GET THE AVERAGE PERSON FROM CLIMBING THE STAIRS TO CLIMBING THE SEVEN HIGHEST MOUNTAINS ON EACH CONTINENT. THEY ARE GOING TO BE PURELY INSPIRATIONAL AND A WAY OF DOCUMENTING MY OWN TRAINING, EXPERIENCES AND IDEAS. IF YOU WISH TO ATTEMPT THIS CHALLENGE OR INDEED CLIMB ANY MOUNTAINS THEN PLEASE, SEEK PROFESSIONAL INSTRUCTION TO GIVE YOU THE ABILITY TO GAIN THE EXPERIENCE TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS.
Before we begin our journey and start training properly for it we needed to work out where our fitness stands and to see if we are being to optimistic.
On Wednesday our training started with us doing the South Wales Three Peaks; The Sugar Loaf, The Blorenge and Ysgyryd Fawr. These three mountains sit around Abergavenny so gave us a good chance to complete a circuit of the town and test ourselves. The idea of this was that we would walk a similar distance we would travel on summit day of Mount Elbrus carrying the same kit we plan on taking with us. This would not only show us if we could manage to walk the distance but also if the kit we had was fit for purpose and what we need to change to save weight. At the start of the day We both were carrying around 15kg of equipment including water and food.
The kit we each carried is pictured below I will do a separate post listing the equipment.
Our day started with us planning on climbing Ysgyryd Fawr to the North East of Abergavenny, We walked accross to it and headed directly up the South East face to get to the ridge on top the quickest way possible. We set ourselves the aim of being on the summit two hours after we set off. We made it in one and a half hours. So far so good.
From the Summit of Ysgyryd Fawr we dropped off the North face down into the valley between that and our next objective the Sugar loaf. once we reached the base of the mountain we headed up the side onto the eastern most spur of the mountain. From there we headed towards the last climb before the summit and headed directly up the east side of the summit. Our goal for this was six hours, we reached this in five hours, just in time to see the sun set.
On the summit we quickly got ourselves ready to continue in the dark. Donning down jackets and head torches we headed on down the mountain as quickly as we could, our last test the Blorenge looming ominously above us. We headed down through three small villages and across the Canal to the bottom of our last test. This took us longer than we thought and had to make the toughest decision a mountaineer can take and turned away from our last test. This decision was not taken because we were not fit enough to climb the last mountain of the day but we started the day later than planned and were relying on getting the train home so had to make it in time to catch the last train.
From this first test we both realised that even tho it was a hard day we are both alot fitter than we thought we were and now can focus on improving this fitness even further and enhancing our technical skill set.
Cheers guys, thanks for reading
Burf
Matts Mountaineering 