Ventures

Don't Say Ventures Do Nothing!

High Adventure 2002

When I moved up to Ventures from Scouts, I would never have believed that I would end up stranded on a mountain, somewhere in North Wales.

On one weekend in February 2002, two teams were entered from our group to challenge a walking weekend anywhere in the UK - otherwise known as Leicestershire's High Venture.

We set off from Melton at 6:30pm, shortly joining four other coaches from around Leicestershire. After three films we arrived at our destination at 1:30am Saturday morning. We set up our camp at our unknown campsite. By 2:30am we were set up and in our sleeping bags, with other groups still attempting to set up.

After very little sleep, I stumbled outside of my tent and looked around with terror. Surrounding us was miles and miles of mountains. After a very quick breakfast, prepared by our support team, we put on our walking bags, carrying all of our possessions, and went for a kit check.

Our aim was to survive in our destination - Snowdonia, to collect as many points from check points along the way and get to our overnight stop.

Before we left in my team we were given two maps and a talk on how to survive. That was it, our last glance of civilization and the other team. We set off in the pouring rain with a wet map. After a short time we arrived at our first checkpoint. The winds then got up (we found out later up to 70mph) and the snow came hurtling down. Our only option was to head down towards the valley where we could see another group.

We never did find the group, but a barn, where we stopped for an early lunch. I was not really hungry and I could not eat anyway as I was so cold. From out of nowhere another group wandered by. They were heading back as they were tired and one of their members had dropped out due to an injury.

As they left us, we saw a group, high up on the mountainside. We all agreed they were mad, as no one should be walking up there in such dangerous conditions. We finally managed to gather up some courage to tackle one of those huge mountains. As we started our hike our hopes were lifted as the sun came out. I have never seen such a beautiful sight once we reached the top.

Our hopes were then destroyed as we could see lakes but no lakes were anywhere near where we thought we were on the map. As a group we decided to climb another mountain - twice as big as the last. We followed a stream up but the top never came. One of our team members, Becky, had an asthma attack which lead to hypothermia. I was extremely scared inside, we had no idea where we were, and no matter how hard we blew our survival whistles, no one came. Luckily someone had their mobile phone but all we could say to the emergency rescue was, "hi, we are on top of a hill, somewhere in Snowdonia", then we were cut off. There was no signal. We didn't know what to do, there was so little we could have done. After a cup of soup between us, we decided it was best to get off this mountain so that Becky could get some help, and we may find out where we were.

We could see a village below in the valley, this was our aim. Two hours after we were meant to be back at night camp, we were still walking. Becky had recovered from her asthma attack and was walking (we all took turns to carry her bag). After passing over the same river several times, and heading in what we thought was the right direction, we came to a forest. We had to go through it.

As we walked on, finding our way through this thick forest, it got darker and darker. Finally we came to a building (for those who have seen The Blair Witch, this is how it was). We were all uneasy but we all gave a sigh of relief when Mark said he had been here when he was in high school. It was Aberglasten Hall.

Here we phoned Kay and found out one of our Ventures was on the mountain rescue team. Craig then came and saved us, taking us back to base camp, where we found one of our tents had been blown into the river. We went straight to bed (in the other team's tent) having chocolate fingers and cheesy strings for dinner.

The following day we walked ten minutes from the campsite to the village we had seen from the mountaintop the previous day. We had our best meal of the weekend. A sausage sarnie!

When the other team arrived back at base we found out they were the ones we had seen in the terrible snowstorms at the top of the mountain.

Unfortunately for us we didn't win a trophy, not even for Best Mountain Survival. But we really didn't care - we just wanted to get home. And we did by watching another three films and the usual Venture celebration. I'd like to thank the great members of my team, Pete, Mark, Becky, Zoë and Adam, and also congratulate the other 36th team, Dave, Spud, Sandra, Claire and Steve for getting 2nd place in the 18 to 25 age group. Well Done!

Suzie

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