Thanks all for your suggestions. I just wanted to let you know how we got on!
The day started around 16:00, and after a couple of hours on the hills just doing some basic navigation brush-ups, we had a pub lunch and then set off up one of the Fan’s at 21:00, leaving the car in the car-park.
I implemented the “what would you need to bring if you were guiding a single friend up the mountain” and he had to write a list within 60 seconds. Everything left out of the list led to an extra 0.5litres carried – I was annoyed that he only missed four items, but oh well!
We then started the trudge up the mountain in the dark and the night began to close in. As we were on our way up, I ensured he was aware of his surroundings – getting him to look out for signs such as the sound of the river (too dark to see it), the outline of the forest against the horizon etc.
After about 45 minutes, we were at the top and so began the main task of finding out where we were. Each “refresher” session would involve a basic physical exercise, such as holding out the full pack in a squat, or push-ups with the pack on, spider crawls etc... All sessions were carried out by both him and me, although I did have a lighter pack by about 5kg.
After each set I would hand him the map and tell him to find us on the single spread of an OS map – I gave no indication as to where we were, but he knew we were higher than almost everything else around, and was looking for a river next to a path, with a car-park at the base etc...
After 30 seconds, I would take the map from him, and we would continue our walk.
The 55-60 mph constant wind added to the sense of atmosphere and it was good to see things like the hill fog rolling in – so he could see the horizon and stars start to vanish. Other than the really strong wind, the night was pretty good, and as the fog closed in to a visibility of about 2-5m the steep sided cliff on one side (with the wind blowing up it, thankfully) added to the sense of adventure. Every 10 minutes we would then stop and repeat the physical “refresher” followed by a chance to read the map. After one hour, we then did double physical refreshers, with 60 seconds to read the map. I hadn’t fully appreciated how difficult it was to work out where you were on a map not knowing the starting point, especially with a 5m visibility! All the time, I was still performing the navigation.
At about midnight, he finally located where we were and so we moved into the second stage. We now went off-path and started to go into the boggier, marsh section of the fan’s, towards a gently sloping plateau. Here we did micro navigation, so first he had to walk around the cliff-edges and work out exactly where we were, once he did he told me the exact location and we checked it against the GPS. Every 10m error meant 1 minute of physical “refresher” session for both people (as I didn’t want this to come across as vindictive).
We then performed dead reckoning navigation to various arbitrary points on the plateau. For example, I would ask him to take me to the tip of the “A” in the word “Beacon” written across the map. Every 10m error was 1 minute of refresher. This then repeated, getting him to try out different techniques and generally just wearing him out whilst walking in rough terrain.
At about 2am we took a brief break to grab some food, which led to a great opportunity to get him totally disorientated in the fog. After sitting down behind a small mound to get out of the wind (which seemed stronger than ever) I asked him to return us to the path. It was interesting to see just how disorientated he had become, not really knowing anything about how to get back there.
We then continued another hour of navigation at the top, before moving onto stitching up a banana inside a bothy bag. “Why?” I hear you ask, well I wanted to see his fine motor skills after a bit of physical endurance and because I saw it on the TV in a surgery school! It also offered a good change of pace.
After 45 minutes to descend, we arrived back at the car for about 4am, where I let him change into his nightclothes and get into a sleeping bag. I of course, was “too tired” to change and would just sleep in my seat as is.
About five of the longest minutes later (it was hard not to go to sleep myself) I could see he was fast asleep, when I woke him up with a start and get him to recite the mayday call, and then tell me three things he would take to the top and back if he could only take three. I was pretty chuffed when he got pretty much the “perfect three” saying a map, compass and some food. I still docked him some points for not saying a mobile phone, bothy bag, or water but he could never say them all – so he was always going to get extra punishments!
We then drove about 15 minutes to the other location and proceeded to climb Pen-Y-Fan at a fast, almost jogging rate, holding “Bob”, our trusty 5litre water bottle over our head as we walked. It turned out to be quite a feat to manage more than about 3 minutes after all the “refresher” sessions earlier, but we took it in turns and had about 6 minutes of “Bob” and 10 minutes of no “Bob”!
A quick stop at the top and then the walk down before arriving back via a rather circular route to the car at around 11:00.
He stupidly then said “phew it’s all over” (or something like that!), only to be greeted with the final challenge - push-ups in the river.
Finally, it was time for a kip after a week at work and a reasonable endurance session. Net time, I’m planning a two day event, but we’ll save that until later...
I think he’s certainly learned a fair bit about navigation, had been stretched, but not tested as much as I would like. The issue I did find is that by doing the punishments and event myself, I was not able to push him beyond breaking point. Next time, I’m thinking of tag-teaming with someone else, as you need to be significantly more physically fit than the person training if you’re going to test their will to continue whilst doing the same as them. The idea of the second bout worked excellently, but it would have needed a third push to the top to get him really tested – the balance is to decide when to stop – as on return, why not a 4th, 5th etc?
I will also admit to being pretty shattered (like him) so the will to not put yourself through lots more pain and suffering begins to override the will to train someone else. It’s also easy to judge now that I’m rested and sitting on my chair in front of a PC.
Cheers,
Ag
