THE DARK PEAK

Personal Profiles

James "spooky Jim" Williams: 17 years 5 months 15 days 8 hours 47 minutes Most noted for the creation of Franken porridge. (See day 3)

David Woz Ere Brett 16 ish Looking for adventure Navigation is my specialty though doesn’t always know what I am doing.

Scott Alexander Harrison CBE, OBE, BBC and general plonker Age 16 years 6 months and 1 day Class myself as incompetent navigator, adventurer and general dandy, unfortunately the others agree.

Ben the gold fish Page Gets better the more tired he is. Don’t feed with caffeine.

Daniel the "you can't touch this stuff" Gambini Age 15 / mental age minus ... Low Most noted for general use and abuse of fire. Comes with bad language, as standard.

The Bus A quote if Queen met the bus... “The devil put aside for me, for me. A bus der der der der der der der der der der der etc. crunch bang der der der etc."

On a highway to hell....
The Journey begins

Our journey to the land-o-the bogs began auspiciously enough, the bus was late. Although that in itself isn't a problem it did highlight my personal fears about our means of transportation. Less than 3 months ago this bus broke down on an unexceptional drive down the M1, resulting in a hair raising push off the motorway in which the author was conscripted and an arduous 7 hour wait. Luckily for us the van managed to hold itself together for the duration, our only concern being the light traffic encountered. The gang were in a merry mood, highlights of conversation included a discussion on computer animated films and the upcoming US election (we are of course highly educated and we did talk of far more pressing topics but nothing that is conceivable by the lesser minds of mortals….). Most people began to sleep fitfully in the oddest positions imaginable, including upside down, hell whatever's comfortable… Awoken by the sudden screech to a halt we discovered that our antique motor vehicle had arrived at its destination, the drum hill scout camp. However the journey did not end there, as yet we did not know where on the site the bunk house was. Wisely choosing to pass up the opportunity to locate it on the site map, we dispatched Mark to locate our accommodation. He disappeared into the night and disappeared, presumed kidnapped and cannibalised by rabid princes trust campers. That was until he returned and informed us that we had been parked outside it for 20 min.

'Twas the night before hiking'...

Our bunk house was a modest affair, a small kitchen dining room, a toilet, and a bedroom that would have made the Tardis jealous. 6 beds were piled on top of each other in a room the size of a small cupboard and everyone slept on top of another person in all manners of precariously hung bedding. Having slept for a short period in the van we were still conscious when it came to kit issuing time. David and I took charge of the navigation equipment (cos we know how to use it) and everyone took charge of their respective tents and cooking stuff. This completed we hit the hay, with the exception of Ben who missed and hit the floor...

Day 1 – Oh how much we didn't know The morning began at Doctors Gate where we kitted up for the off. Having driven for an hour and half having seen the locals, note the nice view where we stopped on route (James and I were impressed). The route started by heading to the first stream on the Doctors Gate path. We walked up it hoping to find a certain stream which would take us to our next checkpoint.

AT THE START

THE FOG LIFTS

We then headed up a steep bank on to a large plateau. The area was completely fogged out with nothing visible. I navigated by walking from tuft of grass to tuft of grass. We here first heard the sound of the irritating Grouse; this haunted us the whole first day. We eventually found a ridge which I recognised as Devils Dike. We then headed towards a waterfall on a bearing using streams we thought were on the map to get us there. We then realised they weren't the right streams, but we did hear some loud running water so we headed for this and after 10 -15 minutes we all got there.

From here we saw our first glimpses of the final climb to the peak. To get there we simply took a bearing and aimed straight for it. Our morale was a lot greater since we managed to find the waterfall, though Daniel did seem really tired from being sick. We managed to reach the top by the crash site in time. We took plenty of pictures. The site was pretty eerie and I think we were all touched by the visit. At the trig point we helped Daniel re pack his bag as his roll mat collapsed. He was now sorted and ready for the off., having left twenty minutes late time began to catch up on us.

THE CRASH SITE

THE FOG LIFTS

The fog began to clear, and it was pretty easy to see the Pennine Way and the Waterfall the other side of a wide valley. We headed straight for the Pennine Way as we could now navigate by sight. We crossed the river where it was very narrow and then headed up a grassy bank.

Bog stop On coming up the ridge, quite a few of us had needed one; I thought I would add this as we were told to include everything. Now I feel refreshed I think I will continue, on reaching the Pennine Way we decided to follow it for 100m until we found a good place to get out of its gully. We then did a bog walk cutting across the peat to reach where we had come off Doctors Gate. We got on ok until we hit the steep slope into the stream by Doctors Gate.

A BOG STOP

We got round this by walking at an angle to lessen the descent and we took it at our own time waiting at the bottom. We then went to the car park where we started. I had to do some first aid on my foot, with a bit of mole skin and lots of talc as I had managed to put my boot in the wrong place a few times and got water in it.

A BOG DITCH

After this little break and a pep talk, we walked over the road for our ascent of Kinder. We then realised it was a bit of a gorge. So we walked a 100m up the road to find a waterfall which provided a suitable crossing point. We gradually made our way to a stream that would take us half way to the foot of Kinder. The stream was a steep sided peat valley with lots of valleys running along it. To begin with we followed along the stream by walking along the bank as the water was just a bit too deep. This included lots of putting our back sides on the bog, mind the toilet humour. We then found the stream climed down further on so we then walked along the stream bed. Having been suggested that we put a person on the top of the banks of the stream, Scott and I did this standing on top and contouring. The others joined us but as there was so much fog this was little help.

When we came out of the river it was really nice and sunny. Daniel, James and Ben were having a good chinwag while Scott and I navigated. We passed the “in findable” grouse huts, which were found with a number of quad bike tracks. These were marked with white posts. We followed this track down to a river crossing where we came out by the remnants of a cottage. We sat down to have our filling pitta bread peanut butties. These were extremely filling and rock solid.

A GROUSE BUTT

They did though taste really good, better than most of the other food. We headed up a muddy bank on to the stream path long the face of Kinder Scout.

The heavens opened as we wandered on the river by the foot of the ominous looking Kinder Scout. This was rather daunting. We had to cross the raging river , which was around 3m wide so we decided to get to the bank to find a suitable crossing place.

By this point James and I waited 50m ahead on the rock to check on the others. We decided to take the scramble separately spaced out but on the same route this meant if the rocks did move from underneath us whoever was below would be safe, secondly it meant I had the opportunity to scout a route and talk the others up if they needed up. Halfway up the 60 or so meter scramble it began to rain it wasn't that hard but once we reached the edge the rain was hard, the rest were coming up with Ben and James next eventually followed by Scott and Daniel who was very tired by this point.

WALKING TOGETHER

DOUBLE RAINBOWS

We stopped for five minutes to see the view and admire the double rainbow across the valley below. This kind of made up for the effort on the scramble but by this point Daniel wished to call it a day. We trudged along the path. It was around 5.30 now and we were losing the light. As I was navigating I was pin pointing our position using different rocky out crops and the snake inn which was a few miles away but provided a good point of reference we decided when it was five minutes from complete loss of light to take a map bearing and head for Edale. The edge path was very muddy and horrible with parts of it near impassable then the path also snaked around headland and gulleys which took us well off course the speed was demoralising but we slogged on.

When we looked to see the sun setting we then decided we were in deep, deep shit, well we were in a bog. I kept calm. Trying to sound confident in my navigation the turning point I chose and bearing turned out to be very good as we were dead on target. I have previously made silly mistakes when I have been tired but I managed to get the others to stop as by this point they weren’t very cooperative about the navigation. I got Ben to take a compass and to walk on as greater bearing as he could walk meanwhile Scott kept an eye on Daniel, and James and I continued walking with me guiding Scott and Daniel with my head torch. We began to cross the bogs.

The idiots’ practical art of bog walking/ running / falling on your face.

• Don't do it
• if you have do it do it in light
• Keep together.
• Use a reliable compass.
• all have torches
• Carefully navigate the high land.

What we did

• We firstly did it
• In pitch darkness
• We kept separating and regrouping
• My compass had a large bubble
• There were only two torches in use
• Most of us jumped off the edge of banks hoping to hit peat and not being able to see the bottom

As you can see we didn't read the idiots guide and instead we defined a new form of idiocy, I present the great art of Jackass adventure sports. Do not try these at home you shouldn't have really read this section as it has corrupted your ideas for life. Having read this you shall never ever be safe enough to go up a mountain.

After half an hour we saw a torch flashing in the distance. We continued on at ever greater speeds but Daniel was now moaning and going slowly we pulled him through, ignoring the pessimistic comments (they get better but he I think he did realise he had very little choice).

When we reached the torch light we discovered it belonged to our assesor Mark. After satisfying himself we were more or less ok, he ran down the steep hill to meet Ange. We then headed on with Daniel trailing behind with Scott. We stopped to let him catch up and asked if he wanted weight taken off but he declined the offer. As we slowly edged our way down the very steep hillside we slowed down. I know by now most of us were tired of Daniels comments but we just tried to keep calm and keep our feelings to ourselves. We reached a track below exhausted and aching. There was only 500m to go. We force fed Daniel Lucozade as we came to the end of a cobbled path and the main road in the village.