Dark & White Events/Cotswold Outdoor - DW4 2010 Adventure Race
12th Hope Moors & Tors fell race
Jeremy Sainter & Adrian Boyes / 23.10.2010
The 12th Hope Moors & Tors race will go down in the annals as a bit of an epic. As the saying goes "what a difference a day makes" Saturday was a beautiful sunny Autumn day for setting out the course, not so on Sunday the day of the event, it can be best described as persistently and exceptionally wet! The rain started around 6.45 a.m. and did not let up until everyone had crossed the finish line late in the afternoon.Competitors huddled around the sports pavilion in Hope as they registered for either the shorter 8.5 mile Hope Skyline course or the full classic Hope Moors & Tors 20 miler. Surprisingly given the weather there was an excellent turn out with 87 competitors on the short course and 103 on the long course - there were even several entries on the day, they must have been mad or hadn't seen the weather forecast!!
So to the start: 190 runners lined up on the road outside the church at Hope for the mass start at 10 a.m. They all looked very damp and soggy as they waited for the start but subsequently set off very enthusiastically heading towards Castleton across the fields. The first climb up Cave Dale behind Peveril Castle was very "limestone" slippy as water ran down the middle of the track which was in reality more like a small river than a path. But the view up the dale was quite ethereal as the mist clung to the cliffs and steep valley sides.
It was then on to Mam Tor where the runners were greeted with a steadily increasing wind and of course the ubiquitous rain which was now beginning to drive even harder, a premise of things to come.
From Mam Tor the 87 runners on the shorter route carried on the ridge via Hollins Cross onto Lose Hill before descending back into Hope and the finish. For those on the full 20 mile route it was a case of dropping down from Hollins Cross into Edale, the descent into the valley providing a slight respite from the weather, it was noticeably calmer in the Edale car park at checkpoint 4. But as the competitors slogged their way up Grindsbrook onto Kinder the true epic nature of the event unfolded. The stream coming down Grindsbrook was now a raging torrent and very difficult to cross with competitors holding hands and helping each other across. It can be summed up by the comments from Matt Boyes who swept this section of the course behind the racers: "to say Grindsbrook was in spate is in understatement….impossible to cross lower down...had to head north onto Kinder and then run back to CP5 but my companion Sarah slipped and was nearly washed away at Grindsbrook top...hung onto her as she suffered a neck to toe immersion!....carried on to collect CP6....the streams were being blown back onto the plateau...never seen it like that before...conditions definitely Not Good!...incredible!..."
By checkpoint 7 at Edale Youth Hostel it was obvious that conditions on Kinder had been horrendous, the first competitor through was some 20 minutes behind the expected schedule based on the times from the last few years. So how could you describe the weather for the Kinder section of the race - torrential, definitely; a deluge, yes not an exaggeration, even monsoon like with rain bouncing a foot into the air in addition to the strong, squally westerly wind!See All Event Posts
