olo/ Unsupported Winter Ramsay’s Round (58 Miles and 9000 meters of Ascent)
What an adventure that was! I’ve been anxious about doing the Ramsay round in winter for a while and when I had an attempt back in early January, it certainly confirmed why! It really has it all from true remoteness, big hills, proper winter conditions and some very exciting terrain, but doing this all solo and unsupported added the true spice
I started at 1pm on Friday in some amazing Scottish sunshine, it was a nice cool temperature, making the traverse of the Mamores really enjoyable. Things were going really well, I was exactly where I thought I might be for sunset, which was incredible! Then things started to get a little more exciting 😬, coming off Binnein Mór has a steep slope with snow that was solid making getting lower much harder than planned due to little purchase with micro spikes, but with some axe cutting I safely made my way down.
After the Mamores you reach the valley that leads down towards Loch Treig, which cruising down in the dark felt much easier than a few hours previously. From here you then make your way and around the 5 Munros that surround Loch Treig, which at times certainly felt exciting, including sliding 30m down a slope, thinking I was about to hurt myself pretty badly. Thankfully not!
Then just before dawn I reached the start of the Grey Corries, it had been really cold with light snow all night with a northerly wind, as well as being quite cloudy too, but progress began to slow as the snow was covering all the rocky/ rough terrain, the snow also became much more frequent.
There were some testing times traversing the Grey Corries on to the Aonachs, but with the snow being more consistent, it allowed me to keep the spikes on until coming off the Ben.
As I reached Carn Mor Dearg, the sun finally made an appearance again and gave amazing views of the Ben and a truly amazing finish back to Glen Nevis, where it all began 😁
I managed to finish in a time of 23 hours and 9 minutes, making me the first person to complete a winter S/U Ramsay’s round, alongside finally completing and being the first to finish the trio of the big three rounds in the U.K.