Page 12 - 2020 AMA Winter

GUESTWRITER
A few years ago, I was fed up with my life. A city-based, office-centric existence had left me feeling down and depressed. I’d spent a decade in my 20s chasing the wrong things. I’d lost sight of my childhood passion for the great outdoors. I got distracted by the societal pressures of mortgages, promotions, money and relationships – and never seemed to be able to find the time for hiking.
But, aged 30, I totally reassessed my life choices, re-prioritised time outdoors, and embarked on a crazy peak-bag- ging mission. Over the next three years I climbed 1,001 mountains across the UK, fitting adventure around my job and everyday responsibilities. In 2017 I climbed all 446 mountains over 2,000ft in England and Wales – the so-called ‘Nuttalls’ – in just six months, the fastest ever time. I repeated the feat in 2018, bagging all 273 600m mountains in Ireland and Northern Ireland, known as the ‘Van- deleur-Lynams’, and I finally completed my 1,001-mountain challenge in 2019 by bagging all 282 ‘Munros’, mountains over 3000ft in Scotland. It was a journey that rekindled my love for the outdoors and consolidated my determination to live as adventurous a life as possible.
You too could easily become a peak- bagger. It’s simple. Just pick a list and get going. Maybe you’ll opt for an intensive, hardcore challenge; or perhaps you’ll choose to take your time, aiming to finish in a year or two, or a lifetime. Either way is fine. For novice hill-walkers, the 214 Wainwrights are the perfect list – challenging yet achievable. If you’re after
something far more rugged and intrepid, the Munros are higher, gnarlier and wilder; or, if you’re strapped for time, why not go for a shorter adventure such as the Welsh 3000ers or the National Three Peaks. Planning such an adventure doesn’t need to be excessively complicated or time-consuming, either. Buy the guidebooks, read blogs, pore over maps, plot routes, organise your kitbag, plan a timeline – all of these help, but sometimes all you need to do is grab your boots, throw a backpack over your shoulders and head for the hills.
My peak-bagging adventures genuinely changed my life. In the city I felt agitated and frustrated, but out walking and camping in the wild places of the UK I was happy and free. It was as if I was tapping into something intrinsic, like an ancestral yearning to be connected to landscape and nature. I found the process
of putting one foot in front of the other both therapeutic and healing. It cleared my head, helped me de-stress, and put life’s little problems into perspective.
I enjoyed testing myself, going outside my comfort zone and feeling as if I’d really accomplished something. After all, what better sense of achievement could there be than in self-propelling yourself to the top of a mountain? The exercise gave me a real buzz and I relished the opportunity to get fitter and live more healthily, while the simplicity of my only goal for the day being to walk from A to B always gave life a wonderful clarity. And then, of course, there was the way the view from a summit could make my soul sing.
Could a peak-bagging adventure give you a similar experience? I’m utterly convinced that if you committed to hiking a list of mountains, you’d be at the start of an amazing, memory-forging, happi- ness-inducing journey. And, with a bit of luck, you’d experience less rain than I did on my Wainwrights expedition.
James Forrest’s Wainwrights adventure was sponsored by Inov-8. He is the award-winning author of Mountain Man: 446 Mountains. Six Months. One record-breaking adventure, published by Bloomsbury.
Stash boxes of supplies
James Forrest on his Wainwrights expedition. Picture credit - www.inov-8.com Dave MacFarlane
12 / ARMY MOUNTAINEER
One day’s supply of food