Stephen Pyke - The Fastest Ever Munro Round.
At 3.06pm on 3 June 2010, fellrunner Stephen Pyke touched the summit cairn of Ben Hope, the most northerly of Scotland’s 3,000 ft peaks, just 39 days nine hours and six minutes after setting off to climb Ben More on Mull on 25 April to complete the fastest round of the Munros. It sliced more than nine days off the previous record of 48 days twelve hours set by Charlie Campbell in the summer of 2000 and has been described by Martin Stone, long distance secretary for the Fell Runners Association as "one of the most extraordinary ultra-distance feats ever in the Scottish Mountainsâ€.
The round was completed entirely under his own steam with a bike being used to link the various mountain ranges and a couple of stretches of kayaking, including the sea crossing from Mull to the mainland. With 283 Munros to climb, he averaged over seven Munros a day and, climbed ten or more Munros on eleven of the forty days. He was typically climbing 3-4,000m per day whilst covering more than 25 miles over a mixture of rough rocky terrain and stretches of thick heather.
With the cold winter weather persisting into the late spring Stephen wore the Montane® sportwool baselayers under a Featherlite smock. To combat the inevitable foul weather in the Highlands he wore Montane’s Atomic DT stretch jacket and Atomic 2.0 pants.
Stephen has been using the round to raise awareness of the work of the John Muir Trust, the UK’s leading wildlands charity. You can read a day-to-day account of the round on his blog http://munros2010.blogspot.com/.
