Welsh 3000s

Take a trip back into the Trail archives to our best adventures

To celebrate Trail’s 30th year, we’re dusting off our archives each month to resurface a favourite adventure from the past three decades. So let’s head back to 2007, when our former editor shunned conventionality and laughed in the face of a looming mid-life crisis by adding his own twist to the Welsh 3000s challenge.

What would persuade you to run almost 50km over 15 mountains in under 24 hours? What would drag your glycogen-deprived body up 13,000ft of ascent, with no time to relish the simple joys of being on a hill? What would possess anyone to treat the great mountains of north Wales as a yardstick for their flagging fitness or a footpump for their deflated ego?

The answer was simple… I was having a midlife crisis. Admittedly, I wasn’t displaying the classic symptoms: no sports car, no hair dye, and no intention of reforming my old school band. But with only 18 months left as a 30-something, I had been overcome by a sudden, unquenchable urge to make up for lost hill time. I was looking for a serious route that would test my fitness and mountain skills. One that would command respect from my peers. Something that had real currency among the outdoor cognoscenti. I reckoned I had just the thing…

“The Welsh 3000ers? Don’t be an arse!” snorted one colleague. “Why the hell would you put yourself through that kind of torture?”

This wasn’t the reaction I had expected.

I’d banked on wide-eyed admiration (simple nods of approval would have done). What

I got instead was a cocktail of ridicule and disdain served with contempt.

“They’re fantastic hills – so why not actually enjoy them?”

I considered pulling rank. Age before beauty and all that… but as we spread the map out on the table it was clear they had a point. Snowdonia breaks down into three key ranges, each with a distinct flavour and unique topography. Across these are scattered 15 mountains that nudge above the magic 3000ft mark. My original plan had been to start on the summit of Snowdon and race over the knife-edge ridge of Crib Goch, up onto