Birth of a Game
By Collin Curry
Published in Alpine Living Issue No. 6
The doors open and a sea of Newcastle United supporters, clad in their traditional black and white stripes, spill out of the line of busses onto the sidewalk. The crowd of fans strikes up a chant, using their regional nickname, as they begin their half-mile trek down Priory Road in Northern Liverpool.
“Everywhere we go! Everywhere we go! It’s the Geordie boys makin’ all that noise, everywhere we go!”
Their destination is Goodison Park, home of Everton Football Club, for the Sunday afternoon Barclays Premiere League match in March.
***
Birth of a Game
This game—played by millions of people around the world—tactically revolutionized by the Dutch, perfected by the Brazilians, and recently dominated by the Spanish, was born in England.
“Football, as we shall see, had a prolonged, messy and complicated birth,” Matthew Taylor says in his book The Association Game: A History of British Football.
Determining the game’s origin is difficult because the name ‘football’ has been used to describe a few different games, including the precursors to rugby and soccer. However, while it is difficult to pinpoint when football was created, there are clear points in history when the game we see today began to take shape. One beginning came with the creation of the Football Association, the governing body of English football, at a London Tavern.
“The creation of the FA in 1863, in a series of meetings, was certainly important,” Taylor says. “It gave football its name, association football and a governing body.”
Taylor explains that, while not immediately effective, the creation of the FA led to a uniform set of rules and an organized competition that would lead to the creation of leagues, forming the foundation of the modern game.
***
The closer the Newcastle fans get to the stadium, the more they start to look like a stream than a sea. However, the blue-clad Everton supporters heavily outnumber the Geordie Boys.
As the whistle blows to start the game, the tension in the air at Goodison Park is palpable. Less than five minutes into the match, tension gives way to panic for the Everton supporters. Newcastle rips off four shots in quick succession, forcing Everton’s American goalkeeper, Tim Howard, into a series of acrobatic saves. The whole stadium exhales in relief as the ball is finally cleared away by the Everton defense. The whole stadium except for the Newcastle fans, that is. Wedged into one corner of the stadium, the Geordie Boys sing all the louder.
***
A Cultural Phenomenon
It is supporters like the Geordie Boys that make the English football game so unique. Grant Wahl, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, says the supporters’ traditions is what sets the English football culture apart from sports in the United States, such as basketball and American football.
“The atmosphere at an English club soccer game is very organic and supporter driven,” says Wahl. “It is songs and chants being initiated by the fans without being prompted by a scoreboard operator.”
He says the English game is even more supporter driven than football in other European countries.
“If you think about country stereotypes, a lot of times the English are seen as very restrained, but their soccer crowds are the opposite,” Wahl says.
In his book, Taylor says supporting a football team involves a degree of emotional investment absent in other forms of media.
“Football was in the sense more than merely a game or a form of entertainment: it engaged the personality and became a source of meaning and identity in peoples’ lives,” Taylor writes.
Neil Clement is a 53-year-old lawyer and soccer coach living in Birmingham, Alabama. Originally from Stalybridge, a working class milltown on the east side of Manchester, Clement has been a Manchester United supporter his entire life.
“My earliest and best football memory is watching the 1968 European Cup Final between Manchester United and Benfica of Portugal,” Clement says.
He says he remembers watching the game with his family while huddled in front of their black and white TV. Manchester United won the game 4-1, becoming the first English team to win the European Cup.
Clement explains that proximity is what makes English football culture so unique.
“To begin with, you are dealing with a small overpopulated island with cities and towns that are very close together,” he says. “The community rallies around its local teams. The game pervades the entire society.”
According to the FA, the country has 366 professional teams spread over 16 different leagues.
“It is amazing to see how much support every team has all over the country,” says Wahl. “It is not just the big clubs that get the passionate support.”
***
As the game settles into a steady rhythm between the two teams, the Everton fans’ panic subsides to a nervous tension again. As quickly as it settles, the stadium erupts with noise again as Everton midfielder James McCarthy scores. Now, it is the Everton supporters’ turn to sing.
The first half ends and everyone in the stadium takes this time to catch their breath.
***
Dark Times
Throughout the history of the game, the darker side of football has reared its head. Taylor writes that the violent behavior of some supporters was heavily covered by the media.
“Historians looking back on football in the 1970s and 1980s could be forgiven for thinking that hooliganism was all that mattered,” says Taylor.
Taylor explains that the best way to understand hooliganism is to look at it as a range of actions along a spectrum. From swearing and general rowdiness at one end to orchestrated clashes with police and rival fans on the other.
Nick Hornby, an English author and Arsenal F.C. fan, described his experience with hooliganism in his book, Fever Pitch:
“In my experience there was more violence in the seventies—that is to say, there was fighting more or less every week—but in the first half of the eighties, it was less predictable and much nastier.”
Hornby describes seeing the police confiscate “knives and machetes and other weapons I did not recognize, things with spikes coming out of them.”
To combat hooliganism, fences and barriers were erected to separate fans. Hornby says that this, combined with century-old stadiums, huge crowds and standing room only terraces, led to one of the darkest moments in the history of the English game: the Hillsborough disaster.
Taylor describes how 96 football supporters were killed at Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield at the beginning of the F.A. Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in 1989. He says that hundreds of Liverpool fans arrived at one end of the stadium creating a serious bottleneck to enter the game. The police opened an exit gate to relieve the crushing, but failed to direct fans to the barely filled side pens. Instead, fans were being squeezed into the central pen.
“With even the narrow gates at the front locked, fans had no means of escape and were crushed to death against the perimeter fence that kept them from the pitch,” Taylor says.
Hornby writes that he heard there had been some sort of accident while he was watching Arsenal, but that he did not hear details until later.
“By the time we got home it was clear that this wasn’t just another football accident,” he says. “The numbers of the dead rose by the minute—seven, then a score, then fifty-something and eventually 95—and you realized that if anybody had even a shred of common sense left available to them, nothing would ever be the same again.”
The Hillsborough tragedy led to sweeping changes in English football, one of which was the ban of standing room only terraces. Taylor says that British clubs spent over 500 million pounds on stadium improvements between 1991 and 1997.
***
As the referee starts the second half, two games are played in Goodison Park—the match between the players and the battle between the supporters. Both sets of fans exchange volleys of chants and songs as the players exchange shots and tackles on the field.
***
T.V. and Tickets
Taylor explains there was a feeling that “football was being taken away from fans in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster.”
As money poured in from TV deals, football clubs began to run more like businesses, and supporters were treated more like customers.
“Nothing shaped the relationship between football and its supporters more than television, “ says Taylor.
John Pearman, a Liverpool supporter and editor of Liverpool fanzine Red All Over The Land, says the money poured into the game changed football, though not for the better.
“Television may have popularized the sports we have, but believe me they’ve diluted them beyond belief,” says Pearman. “The culture used to be there. A football club was part of the community, part of street life.”
***
After 20 minutes of play in which neither team takes hold of the game, Everton scores again. The Everton supporters roar with elation and finally drown out the Geordie Boys for good. The decibel levels of the moment are only matched when Everton scores again in the final minutes of the game to put the nail in the coffin.
***
Enduring Traditions
While the atmosphere may be more subdued, traditions of the clubs still have fans flocking to games from all over the world. Clement says those traditions are why he loves Manchester United.
“It’s Dennis Violet, George Best, Bobby Charlton, Dennis Law, Nobby Stiles, Lou Maccari, Eric Cantona, Giggs, Scholes, Sir Matt and Sir Alex,” he says. “It’s 20 league titles [a national record] and three European titles. Its 11 FA Cups. It’s the Stretford End and the Munich Tunnel. It’s the treble in 1999. It’s Old Trafford and the giant cantilever stands that make the stadium. It’s tradition unlike any other.”
Pearman says that, while the diluted atmospheres have left him disillusioned, there is still nothing that compares to singing the Liverpool anthem, You’ll Never Walk Alone, before a game.
“You’ll Never Walk Alone was at its best on a wet Saturday afternoon when the Kop was a terrace, because it had a feel about it that maybe can’t really be explained,” says Pearman. “Just 20,000 supporters, standing together their voices raised in song had a feel, mist seemed to rise as the crowd warmed each other; it was then that Anfield was a special place.”
Clement says that every sports fan should listen to the Liverpool supporters sing You’ll Never Walk Alone before a home match.
“I think that song explains a lot about football in the U.K. It speaks to the fans’ sense of togetherness and family, the notion that you have your mate’s back, as well as the hope of a bright tomorrow,” Clement says.
That hope is echoed in one of Manchester United’s own anthems.
“We’ll never die, we’ll never die, we’ll keep the red flag flying high, because Man United will never die!”
While English football supporters agree the sport has changed a great deal during its existence, there is no consensus on how positive or negative those changes have been. One thing that is certain: the country's rich football culture and traditions will endure. As United's fans sing, football will never die.
***
The game ends, Everton fans issue one final cheer as the stadium empties. Newcastle supporters climb aboard their busses for the three-hour return trip. Both groups are already prepared to do it again in a week's time.
By Collin Curry
Published in Alpine Living Issue No. 6
The doors open and a sea of Newcastle United supporters, clad in their traditional black and white stripes, spill out of the line of busses onto the sidewalk. The crowd of fans strikes up a chant, using their regional nickname, as they begin their half-mile trek down Priory Road in Northern Liverpool.
“Everywhere we go! Everywhere we go! It’s the Geordie boys makin’ all that noise, everywhere we go!”
Their destination is Goodison Park, home of Everton Football Club, for the Sunday afternoon Barclays Premiere League match in March.
***
Birth of a Game
This game—played by millions of people around the world—tactically revolutionized by the Dutch, perfected by the Brazilians, and recently dominated by the Spanish, was born in England.
“Football, as we shall see, had a prolonged, messy and complicated birth,” Matthew Taylor says in his book The Association Game: A History of British Football.
Determining the game’s origin is difficult because the name ‘football’ has been used to describe a few different games, including the precursors to rugby and soccer. However, while it is difficult to pinpoint when football was created, there are clear points in history when the game we see today began to take shape. One beginning came with the creation of the Football Association, the governing body of English football, at a London Tavern.
“The creation of the FA in 1863, in a series of meetings, was certainly important,” Taylor says. “It gave football its name, association football and a governing body.”
Taylor explains that, while not immediately effective, the creation of the FA led to a uniform set of rules and an organized competition that would lead to the creation of leagues, forming the foundation of the modern game.
***
The closer the Newcastle fans get to the stadium, the more they start to look like a stream than a sea. However, the blue-clad Everton supporters heavily outnumber the Geordie Boys.
As the whistle blows to start the game, the tension in the air at Goodison Park is palpable. Less than five minutes into the match, tension gives way to panic for the Everton supporters. Newcastle rips off four shots in quick succession, forcing Everton’s American goalkeeper, Tim Howard, into a series of acrobatic saves. The whole stadium exhales in relief as the ball is finally cleared away by the Everton defense. The whole stadium except for the Newcastle fans, that is. Wedged into one corner of the stadium, the Geordie Boys sing all the louder.
***
A Cultural Phenomenon
It is supporters like the Geordie Boys that make the English football game so unique. Grant Wahl, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, says the supporters’ traditions is what sets the English football culture apart from sports in the United States, such as basketball and American football.
“The atmosphere at an English club soccer game is very organic and supporter driven,” says Wahl. “It is songs and chants being initiated by the fans without being prompted by a scoreboard operator.”
He says the English game is even more supporter driven than football in other European countries.
“If you think about country stereotypes, a lot of times the English are seen as very restrained, but their soccer crowds are the opposite,” Wahl says.
In his book, Taylor says supporting a football team involves a degree of emotional investment absent in other forms of media.
“Football was in the sense more than merely a game or a form of entertainment: it engaged the personality and became a source of meaning and identity in peoples’ lives,” Taylor writes.
Neil Clement is a 53-year-old lawyer and soccer coach living in Birmingham, Alabama. Originally from Stalybridge, a working class milltown on the east side of Manchester, Clement has been a Manchester United supporter his entire life.
“My earliest and best football memory is watching the 1968 European Cup Final between Manchester United and Benfica of Portugal,” Clement says.
He says he remembers watching the game with his family while huddled in front of their black and white TV. Manchester United won the game 4-1, becoming the first English team to win the European Cup.
Clement explains that proximity is what makes English football culture so unique.
“To begin with, you are dealing with a small overpopulated island with cities and towns that are very close together,” he says. “The community rallies around its local teams. The game pervades the entire society.”
According to the FA, the country has 366 professional teams spread over 16 different leagues.
“It is amazing to see how much support every team has all over the country,” says Wahl. “It is not just the big clubs that get the passionate support.”
***
As the game settles into a steady rhythm between the two teams, the Everton fans’ panic subsides to a nervous tension again. As quickly as it settles, the stadium erupts with noise again as Everton midfielder James McCarthy scores. Now, it is the Everton supporters’ turn to sing.
The first half ends and everyone in the stadium takes this time to catch their breath.
***
Dark Times
Throughout the history of the game, the darker side of football has reared its head. Taylor writes that the violent behavior of some supporters was heavily covered by the media.
“Historians looking back on football in the 1970s and 1980s could be forgiven for thinking that hooliganism was all that mattered,” says Taylor.
Taylor explains that the best way to understand hooliganism is to look at it as a range of actions along a spectrum. From swearing and general rowdiness at one end to orchestrated clashes with police and rival fans on the other.
Nick Hornby, an English author and Arsenal F.C. fan, described his experience with hooliganism in his book, Fever Pitch:
“In my experience there was more violence in the seventies—that is to say, there was fighting more or less every week—but in the first half of the eighties, it was less predictable and much nastier.”
Hornby describes seeing the police confiscate “knives and machetes and other weapons I did not recognize, things with spikes coming out of them.”
To combat hooliganism, fences and barriers were erected to separate fans. Hornby says that this, combined with century-old stadiums, huge crowds and standing room only terraces, led to one of the darkest moments in the history of the English game: the Hillsborough disaster.
Taylor describes how 96 football supporters were killed at Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield at the beginning of the F.A. Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in 1989. He says that hundreds of Liverpool fans arrived at one end of the stadium creating a serious bottleneck to enter the game. The police opened an exit gate to relieve the crushing, but failed to direct fans to the barely filled side pens. Instead, fans were being squeezed into the central pen.
“With even the narrow gates at the front locked, fans had no means of escape and were crushed to death against the perimeter fence that kept them from the pitch,” Taylor says.
Hornby writes that he heard there had been some sort of accident while he was watching Arsenal, but that he did not hear details until later.
“By the time we got home it was clear that this wasn’t just another football accident,” he says. “The numbers of the dead rose by the minute—seven, then a score, then fifty-something and eventually 95—and you realized that if anybody had even a shred of common sense left available to them, nothing would ever be the same again.”
The Hillsborough tragedy led to sweeping changes in English football, one of which was the ban of standing room only terraces. Taylor says that British clubs spent over 500 million pounds on stadium improvements between 1991 and 1997.
***
As the referee starts the second half, two games are played in Goodison Park—the match between the players and the battle between the supporters. Both sets of fans exchange volleys of chants and songs as the players exchange shots and tackles on the field.
***
T.V. and Tickets
Taylor explains there was a feeling that “football was being taken away from fans in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster.”
As money poured in from TV deals, football clubs began to run more like businesses, and supporters were treated more like customers.
“Nothing shaped the relationship between football and its supporters more than television, “ says Taylor.
John Pearman, a Liverpool supporter and editor of Liverpool fanzine Red All Over The Land, says the money poured into the game changed football, though not for the better.
“Television may have popularized the sports we have, but believe me they’ve diluted them beyond belief,” says Pearman. “The culture used to be there. A football club was part of the community, part of street life.”
***
After 20 minutes of play in which neither team takes hold of the game, Everton scores again. The Everton supporters roar with elation and finally drown out the Geordie Boys for good. The decibel levels of the moment are only matched when Everton scores again in the final minutes of the game to put the nail in the coffin.
***
Enduring Traditions
While the atmosphere may be more subdued, traditions of the clubs still have fans flocking to games from all over the world. Clement says those traditions are why he loves Manchester United.
“It’s Dennis Violet, George Best, Bobby Charlton, Dennis Law, Nobby Stiles, Lou Maccari, Eric Cantona, Giggs, Scholes, Sir Matt and Sir Alex,” he says. “It’s 20 league titles [a national record] and three European titles. Its 11 FA Cups. It’s the Stretford End and the Munich Tunnel. It’s the treble in 1999. It’s Old Trafford and the giant cantilever stands that make the stadium. It’s tradition unlike any other.”
Pearman says that, while the diluted atmospheres have left him disillusioned, there is still nothing that compares to singing the Liverpool anthem, You’ll Never Walk Alone, before a game.
“You’ll Never Walk Alone was at its best on a wet Saturday afternoon when the Kop was a terrace, because it had a feel about it that maybe can’t really be explained,” says Pearman. “Just 20,000 supporters, standing together their voices raised in song had a feel, mist seemed to rise as the crowd warmed each other; it was then that Anfield was a special place.”
Clement says that every sports fan should listen to the Liverpool supporters sing You’ll Never Walk Alone before a home match.
“I think that song explains a lot about football in the U.K. It speaks to the fans’ sense of togetherness and family, the notion that you have your mate’s back, as well as the hope of a bright tomorrow,” Clement says.
That hope is echoed in one of Manchester United’s own anthems.
“We’ll never die, we’ll never die, we’ll keep the red flag flying high, because Man United will never die!”
While English football supporters agree the sport has changed a great deal during its existence, there is no consensus on how positive or negative those changes have been. One thing that is certain: the country's rich football culture and traditions will endure. As United's fans sing, football will never die.
***
The game ends, Everton fans issue one final cheer as the stadium empties. Newcastle supporters climb aboard their busses for the three-hour return trip. Both groups are already prepared to do it again in a week's time.
Snow Trek
By Collin Curry
Published in Alpine Living Issue No. 6
As University of Alabama professor, Dr. Kim Bissell, parks our van just outside of Seathwaite Farm in England’s Lake District, I catch my first glimpse of Nick Landells, the mountain guide who will lead Bissell, her daughter Emma and myself up Scafell Pike, England’s tallest mountain. His slight frown confirms the worries I held since we passed some white dusted hills on the drive up from Manchester—snow.
Hiking, or hill walking, has exploded in popularity in the U.K. in recent years.
“It is one of the fastest growing outdoor sports at the moment,” says Matt Le Voi, the company director and founder of Lakeland Mountain Guides who arranged guided walks for us up Scafell Pike and Snowdon, the highest peak in Wales. “I think there is something like 12 million hill walkers in the United Kingdom.”
Le Voi says a major factor in the burst of popularity was the big recession in 2008 because hill walking is essentially a free sport.
“A lot more people were staycationing, [and] they were looking within the country for their kind of fix,” he says.
Le Voi says the country is also going through a fitness craze at the moment, which makes hill walking even more popular.
“The fact that people had limited disposable income, wanted something cheaper and they wanted to get fit, it all kind of pushed toward hill walking,” Le Voi says.
My plan was to climb two of the three mountains that make up the National Three Peaks Challenge. The challenge consists of summiting Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon, the highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales respectively, in just 24 hours. We set our sights on Scafell Pike and Snowdon. The unfortunately timed snow meant that our chances of summiting either mountain were slim.
“Changeable,” is the word Le Voi used to describe the weather in the mountains of England and Wales.
“It is always so hard, as by the time you arrive, all the snow, and more importantly the ice, may be well on its way to disappearing,” says Le Voi referring to our planned climbs in mid-March. “But as of right now, the two mountains still very much have their winter coats on, meaning some quite treacherous walking on the upper slopes.”
Even in the initial planning stages of the mountain climbs, I knew we would be gambling with the weather.
A few days before we were scheduled to meet Landells for the climb up Scafell Pike, I received an excited phone call from Le Voi.
“I looked at the weather and all should be well for a summer-style ascent of both peaks,” he exclaimed.
Unfortunately, the mountain weather lived up to its reputation, and the night before our attempted climb Scafell Pike, the temperatures plummeted in the higher elevations, and it started to snow.
The trek up Scafell Pike begins on a working farm. Hikers park on the road just outside the farm and walk past farmhands, tractors and nearly a hundred sheep. As I follow Landells’ willowy frame through the gates, the sheep look up from grazing to watch us pass by. We soon leave the farm behind and make our way toward the mist-shrouded peak. Stacked stone walls criss-cross the pale green hills rising on either side of our troupe as we make our way toward the valley head. Into our first significant gain in elevation, I look back down the valley to see how much ground we have covered. The view is breathtaking. The valley floor, dotted with sheep and the bright jackets of other hill walkers, spill out behind Lake Derwentwater glimmering in the distance. The higher we climb, the more amazing the view becomes, until it disappears as we entered the mist.
Landells explains that this mist makes Scafell Pike one of the busiest spots for the mountain rescue team.
“The summit of Scafell, is just one large boulder field,” he says. “People reach the top and everything looks the same and then the mist comes in and they have to call for help.”
We soon have to head back down the mountain due to the snow, having not quite made the summit. While the climb is incredible, I can not help but think that we were not off to a great start in our two peaks challenge.
Mountain challenges, like the National Three Peaks Challenge, and my two-peaks-over-96-hours challenge, draw hill walkers of all skill levels to the mountains. Le Voi says the hardest challenge in Wales is called the Welsh 3000, where hikers attempt to climb all of the 3,000-foot peaks in Wales in 24 hours. The most famous challenge in the Lake District is the Bob Graham route. The challenge is to summit 42 peaks over 72 miles in 24 hours.
“It is an incredible challenge,” Le Voi says. “It has 29,000 feet of ascent in it, so in that route you do the height of Everest.”
Having failed to summit England’s highest peak, I turn all of my attention to summiting Snowdon in three day’s time. With 10 other Alpine Living staffers joining me and Dr. Bissell, Wales’s tallest peak presented a different challenge altogether.
We met our guides, Adrian “Ady” Sanders and Iona Pawson at Snowdon’s Pen-y-pass car park to make our final attempt at summiting a mountain on the trip. Our planned route is to ascend via the Pyg Track and to come back down via the Miners Path, two of the most popular paths on Snowdon.
“Snowdon is a very rugged and very aggressive mountain,” Le Voi says. “If you go to Snowdon on a grey day, it can seem a very grim place with all the grey slate. It just has this aggressive quality to it.”
Le Voi says it attracts 450,000 visitors a year.
“Because it is the highest mountain in Wales, and because it is very close to places like Manchester and Liverpool, it attracts a large amount of people,” he says.
Add the rail line to the summit and a café welcoming hikers at the top, and Snowdon is one of the busiest mountains in the world.
As I shake Sanders’s hand, he explains that there is a good deal of ice near the summit, but he and Pawson will do everything they can to get us to the top.
A guide for nearly 20 years, Sanders has climbed all over the world from the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco to the Himalayas, the Andes and the French, Italian and Austrian Alps. He is also a member of the Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team.
If we were ever going to summit Snowdon, it was going to be with Sanders and Pawson.
We gain elevation quickly, and because there is so little vegetation, it is easy to see how much distance we have covered. The Pyg and Miner’s Tracks take hill walkers past two startlingly blue lakes, Llyn Llydaw and Glaslyn. Welsh folklore says upon his deathbed, King Arthur had Sir Bedevire throw the sword Excalibur into Glaslyn.
Much like the fabled sword, my hopes of reaching the summit of Snowdon were lost as we watched a group of hikers have to slide down the mountain because of ice. We are forced to turn back 10 minutes from the summit.
As we begin our descent, I cannot help but feel a little disappointed. I was zero for two in my personal two peaks challenge.
Nevertheless, it is hard to be too disappointed while skipping rocks across the lake where Excalibur lies.
While we did not successfully summit either mountain, I would not say that we failed.
“Reaching the summit is only a small part,” says Sanders as we reach the vans at the bottom of the mountain. “The journey to the summit is never the same, different seasons, different weather and different routes mean different adventures every time.”
While many climbers are often focused on standing at the top of the mountain, Sanders reminders walkers and climbers to take in the surroundings along the way. The climb is just as stunning as the summit. Not summiting just gives me a reason to come back.
By Collin Curry
Published in Alpine Living Issue No. 6
As University of Alabama professor, Dr. Kim Bissell, parks our van just outside of Seathwaite Farm in England’s Lake District, I catch my first glimpse of Nick Landells, the mountain guide who will lead Bissell, her daughter Emma and myself up Scafell Pike, England’s tallest mountain. His slight frown confirms the worries I held since we passed some white dusted hills on the drive up from Manchester—snow.
Hiking, or hill walking, has exploded in popularity in the U.K. in recent years.
“It is one of the fastest growing outdoor sports at the moment,” says Matt Le Voi, the company director and founder of Lakeland Mountain Guides who arranged guided walks for us up Scafell Pike and Snowdon, the highest peak in Wales. “I think there is something like 12 million hill walkers in the United Kingdom.”
Le Voi says a major factor in the burst of popularity was the big recession in 2008 because hill walking is essentially a free sport.
“A lot more people were staycationing, [and] they were looking within the country for their kind of fix,” he says.
Le Voi says the country is also going through a fitness craze at the moment, which makes hill walking even more popular.
“The fact that people had limited disposable income, wanted something cheaper and they wanted to get fit, it all kind of pushed toward hill walking,” Le Voi says.
My plan was to climb two of the three mountains that make up the National Three Peaks Challenge. The challenge consists of summiting Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon, the highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales respectively, in just 24 hours. We set our sights on Scafell Pike and Snowdon. The unfortunately timed snow meant that our chances of summiting either mountain were slim.
“Changeable,” is the word Le Voi used to describe the weather in the mountains of England and Wales.
“It is always so hard, as by the time you arrive, all the snow, and more importantly the ice, may be well on its way to disappearing,” says Le Voi referring to our planned climbs in mid-March. “But as of right now, the two mountains still very much have their winter coats on, meaning some quite treacherous walking on the upper slopes.”
Even in the initial planning stages of the mountain climbs, I knew we would be gambling with the weather.
A few days before we were scheduled to meet Landells for the climb up Scafell Pike, I received an excited phone call from Le Voi.
“I looked at the weather and all should be well for a summer-style ascent of both peaks,” he exclaimed.
Unfortunately, the mountain weather lived up to its reputation, and the night before our attempted climb Scafell Pike, the temperatures plummeted in the higher elevations, and it started to snow.
The trek up Scafell Pike begins on a working farm. Hikers park on the road just outside the farm and walk past farmhands, tractors and nearly a hundred sheep. As I follow Landells’ willowy frame through the gates, the sheep look up from grazing to watch us pass by. We soon leave the farm behind and make our way toward the mist-shrouded peak. Stacked stone walls criss-cross the pale green hills rising on either side of our troupe as we make our way toward the valley head. Into our first significant gain in elevation, I look back down the valley to see how much ground we have covered. The view is breathtaking. The valley floor, dotted with sheep and the bright jackets of other hill walkers, spill out behind Lake Derwentwater glimmering in the distance. The higher we climb, the more amazing the view becomes, until it disappears as we entered the mist.
Landells explains that this mist makes Scafell Pike one of the busiest spots for the mountain rescue team.
“The summit of Scafell, is just one large boulder field,” he says. “People reach the top and everything looks the same and then the mist comes in and they have to call for help.”
We soon have to head back down the mountain due to the snow, having not quite made the summit. While the climb is incredible, I can not help but think that we were not off to a great start in our two peaks challenge.
Mountain challenges, like the National Three Peaks Challenge, and my two-peaks-over-96-hours challenge, draw hill walkers of all skill levels to the mountains. Le Voi says the hardest challenge in Wales is called the Welsh 3000, where hikers attempt to climb all of the 3,000-foot peaks in Wales in 24 hours. The most famous challenge in the Lake District is the Bob Graham route. The challenge is to summit 42 peaks over 72 miles in 24 hours.
“It is an incredible challenge,” Le Voi says. “It has 29,000 feet of ascent in it, so in that route you do the height of Everest.”
Having failed to summit England’s highest peak, I turn all of my attention to summiting Snowdon in three day’s time. With 10 other Alpine Living staffers joining me and Dr. Bissell, Wales’s tallest peak presented a different challenge altogether.
We met our guides, Adrian “Ady” Sanders and Iona Pawson at Snowdon’s Pen-y-pass car park to make our final attempt at summiting a mountain on the trip. Our planned route is to ascend via the Pyg Track and to come back down via the Miners Path, two of the most popular paths on Snowdon.
“Snowdon is a very rugged and very aggressive mountain,” Le Voi says. “If you go to Snowdon on a grey day, it can seem a very grim place with all the grey slate. It just has this aggressive quality to it.”
Le Voi says it attracts 450,000 visitors a year.
“Because it is the highest mountain in Wales, and because it is very close to places like Manchester and Liverpool, it attracts a large amount of people,” he says.
Add the rail line to the summit and a café welcoming hikers at the top, and Snowdon is one of the busiest mountains in the world.
As I shake Sanders’s hand, he explains that there is a good deal of ice near the summit, but he and Pawson will do everything they can to get us to the top.
A guide for nearly 20 years, Sanders has climbed all over the world from the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco to the Himalayas, the Andes and the French, Italian and Austrian Alps. He is also a member of the Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team.
If we were ever going to summit Snowdon, it was going to be with Sanders and Pawson.
We gain elevation quickly, and because there is so little vegetation, it is easy to see how much distance we have covered. The Pyg and Miner’s Tracks take hill walkers past two startlingly blue lakes, Llyn Llydaw and Glaslyn. Welsh folklore says upon his deathbed, King Arthur had Sir Bedevire throw the sword Excalibur into Glaslyn.
Much like the fabled sword, my hopes of reaching the summit of Snowdon were lost as we watched a group of hikers have to slide down the mountain because of ice. We are forced to turn back 10 minutes from the summit.
As we begin our descent, I cannot help but feel a little disappointed. I was zero for two in my personal two peaks challenge.
Nevertheless, it is hard to be too disappointed while skipping rocks across the lake where Excalibur lies.
While we did not successfully summit either mountain, I would not say that we failed.
“Reaching the summit is only a small part,” says Sanders as we reach the vans at the bottom of the mountain. “The journey to the summit is never the same, different seasons, different weather and different routes mean different adventures every time.”
While many climbers are often focused on standing at the top of the mountain, Sanders reminders walkers and climbers to take in the surroundings along the way. The climb is just as stunning as the summit. Not summiting just gives me a reason to come back.