I once placed a large lump of grey Lakeland Slate between the plastic frame and the canvas back of my Berghaus rucksac to stablise it whilst supporting a 2m vertical when activating a summit in the G/LD area.
That lump of slate was forgotten about and I carried it for a good three miles on my way down to Seathwaite - only realising it was there when I reached my car… I still have the lump of slate in my garden as a memento of my stupidity!
Looking forward this morning to three days in the Borders at Alnmouth with Ryedale Walking Group. We are setting off shortly and will be active in your GM/SS region on Thursday.
I’ve now checked - we were 55 mins up and 40 mins down. Comparing our track with G4OBK’s it looks like we took a slightly less direct route to the east of March Cleuch before bending round north west over Kirkbride Hill.
Thus speaketh a scholar of the YSS School of Fell Walking!
Moral of the story - adopt your own version of Naismith’s Rule (algorithm) based on experience of your own ability and experience, round times up to allow time to photograph that rare Orchid or watch the local Buzzards fly over the nearby woods and above all, never compare your timings to those of others!
73, Gerald G4OIG
P.S. After 7 years of joint activations, Paul and I are still “refining” our algorithm as we continue to gain experience and we find our abilities change with the advancing years and frequency of actually getting out on the hills. We were fit… once upon a time!
No need to be excused from bragging, everyone goes up at different speeds and down at even more different speeds.
Yes exactly, People should be able to calculate their own speed over differing terrains, be it tussocks, tracks, bogs, trees debris, grassy fields. Naismith’s Rule is nae where near my rule.
So if you all want to compare for the speed of the mentioned Cairn Hill GM/SS-194 then I took 24 minutes up and 15 minutes back down. Not that I am bragging either. But this might help some people to calculate how long they might take given parameters from other people and their own.
And yes , Gerald you are a bit slow down hill but not as slow as my Cat, but then she did have that terrible fall down Well Hill GM/SS-112 a few years ago so I think that has knocked her confidence quite a bit now.
I found the biggest single influence on my Naismith back in the day was how many pints I sank the night before! Nowadays it is how big a breakfast I had.
Well what do you expect when you determine a route that has multiple ascents on the descent! Normally I am pretty quick on descents, certainly in comparison to mere mortals!
Hi Andrew (HL5BA), Understood that Google will most likely find a blog entry, however since those great volunteers at SOTA have put the capabiity to add a link to the summit information page, I hope I can convince activators to use add a link ( or at least some text ) there.
Hi Richard, Another reason that while people are adding their reports into this part of the reflector (which I hope should remain as long as the summit info pages do) adding a link to the reports that they chose to write here for the benefit of others, makes good sense to me. Agreed Blogs come and go or get renamed giving broken links, but hopefully links to the reflector should not break.
