Another Saturday, another HPM recce. This time Alan couldn't come because his house had blown down (or something like that), but Will wasn't quick enough with the excuses. We dropped Will's car off at Snake Pass and drove back to Cut Throat Bridge to do the 17 mile section in between. We were having second thoughts as we drove up towards the pass in driving rain and hail, but somehow by the time we left the car, the clouds had gone and the sun was shining.
Conditions were very different from the week before, with the ice replaced by mud, but the sunshine made it feel like Spring, and we made good progress as far as Cut Gate. I even worked out where we'd gone wrong the previous week.
After that though it all went horribly wrong. We'd been up here before, in the Grin 'n' Bear It 2007, and I had memories of bogs. But it was all so much worse than I'd remembered, and any attempt to wade led to retreat through knee-deep quagmire, followed by lengthy detours to get round the boggy bits. And it didn't relent. Every time we began to think we might be past the worst, one of us inevitably started sinking. To make matters worse, the sun had gone behind threatening clouds and a cold winds had picked up. It took us about 3 hours to do the next 5 or 6 miles, but felt like eternity, as we collectively lost the will to live. Navigation up here is going to be a nightmare in the dark.
So bad were the bogs that the 2 miles of peat hags we encountered when we finally reached Bleaklow Stones came as a blessed relief. We even managed to find a path through this area (or at least, an almost continuous channel with a few cairns, footprints, and bleached bones of previous visitors). An hour later we reached the Pennine Way, just below the Wain Stones. A unanimous decision that we couldn't be bothered to go up the hill to find the location of the checkpoint, and we all ran down the PW flagstones towards Snake Pass.
17 miles, 6 hours 10 minutes. If we get through this bit in one piece on the night then we'll almost certainly get to the end! At least the rain held off until 10 minutes after we finally started the drive home.
Tags: bogs, High Peak Marathon