As with most ideas at Atom Packs, this one started as a thought from Tom as he was on a hike. He wondered if we could get an Atom Pack to the top of every Wainwright in one month.
The Wainwrights are a collection of 214 summits in the Lake District that were included by Alfred Wainwright in his seven guidebooks. He first wrote the guidebooks as a personal project, so he chose which summits to include based on nothing but his own fondness of them. Over time, the 214 Wainwrights have become the definitive list of peaks to summit in the Lakes.
When we sat down on a Monday morning to discuss our plans for the year, the Atom Packs 214 Challenge was immediately taken up as a great idea to get our local community out and about in the hills. We quickly realised that we needed to include the Roo, so we extended the idea to include getting any Atom Packs product to the tops. We knew that we had made a lot of backpacks and Roos over the years but we weren’t sure if there were enough within a reasonable distance of the Lakes to finish the challenge.
As it turns out, there are! We haven’t asked everyone where they are from, but I’d guess that around half were locals nipping up their backyard fell and the other half had travelled from places as far away as London to help tick off the 214 Wainwrights.
It has been brilliant to see the challenge unfold. Managing the spreadsheet and map was great fun because we got to see entries every single day coming in from all corners of the Lake District. One memorable day was a mid-month Monday morning when we came in to see an email with a simple list of ALL of the Western fells which had been hiked over a weekend, accompanied by a single photo from each one. Thanks, David!
There were plenty of lovely stories from out on the fell tops too.
Early in August, someone took her mum up Castle Crag to complete her first ever Wainwright. It was one of the first images that came to us and it made us think we were on to a good thing!
Two guys, just days apart, didn’t realise it but they were following almost exactly the same route and each did over 30 summits, wild camping along the way. I was in the background receiving Instagram tags and DMs from both of them and I still wonder whether they ever met… Below is James's Notch and David with his Prospector on The Knott in the Eastern fells, both on long hikes, just a day apart.
Amazingly, the Langdale Pikes didn’t receive a visit from an Atom Pack until the third week of August. It was an obvious patch of unclaimed peaks right in the middle of the Lakes, so it was great to see someone go and bag them. The only problem was that he wasn’t using an Atom Pack… I pointed this out and he responded with a photo of an Atom Packs shiny sticker on his bottle! Stickers count, so that was the Langdales completed!
Over on Instagram, we received a series of posts from one Notch user who hiked on the Bob Graham Round route. The route is a famous fell running challenge that people try to complete within 24 hours, but it has also become popular as a multi-day hike for those who are less swift. Chris spent three days hiking on the BG route and ticked off plenty of Wainwrights along the way.
A number of people took their kids up into the mountains too, some probably too young to remember it! Someone who had a day that he won’t forget was Seb, whose dad told us:
“We had a great day. He wanted to do something big so we did the Newlands round, starting at Robinson then Hindscarth, Dale Head, High Spy and Maiden Moor. He loved it.”
Closer to home, the Atom Packs team headed up Binsey one evening after work. It was a great peaceful hike up a small but mighty fell with views over towards Scotland.
At the start, it was quite easy to tick off peaks because nothing had been done yet. But towards the end of August, it was fun to see people deliberately choosing to go up Wainwrights that hadn't been ticked off yet. The month finished on a holiday weekend with 7 fells still to summit, which was a perfect ending. There was still some jeopardy going into it, but the community came good and we got them done. The last summit to be bagged was Lingmell. Tom, Gayle and Winnie set out for the summit but reached it after it had already been summited by Jason who helped out with over 20 summits in the month.
It has been a fun month! Tom has a knack of coming up with good ideas whilst hiking and I think we can agree this was another one, celebrating Atom Packs and the place we call home, the Lake District.
Same time next year?
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Now the question is, who was lucky enough to win the custom pack?