The Gruelling Winter Munro Challenge – an Interview with Anna Wells
When “Climber is first woman to bag gruelling Winter Munro Challenge” appeared all over the local newspapers in the Scottish Highlands, I just had to arrange a chat with Anna Wells. My first introduction to Anna is with her handing me a couple of banana muffins – so not only is she a climbing legend in my eyes, but a baker too.
Anna, 34, completed a Winter Munro round in just 83 days over the Winter finishing them all on 20th March this year. Completing the 282 Munro’s is a big deal in our neck of the woods – a Munro is a Scottish mountain that reaches over 3000ft (914m) and takes many people years to walk them, or in Annas case, just a few months!
The challenge is what it says on the tin – winter means trudging through deep snow, trailing through hail showers and taking shelter from storms and insane winds – but Anna was determined to get the job done. Being a resident in the Highlands, I can safely say that the weather has been foul this year, and I regularly watched Anna’s progress on social media, albeit in the comfort of my pyjamas, backing her efforts.
To succeed a challenge like this takes a lot of drive, and a real need to want to complete it. I asked Anna a little about her background, wondering where the resilience had come from. She shared;
“My climbing background and career have merged over time – I learned how to trad climb and winter climb whilst studying Maths in Aberdeen and then studied in Dundee to train to become a doctor, so I had to be quite focused and not afraid of hard work. I’ve always been really good at aiming high and not worrying about failing. I have big ambitions and I just go for it!”
Anna explained that she is no stranger to big mountains and after training as a doctor, she spent quite a lot of time in the Alps. She was successful in climbing 36 of 82 of the 4000-metre peaks in the Alps including the Matterhorn which is inspirational stuff. Anna admitted;
“I love back-to-back days in the mountains and being totally immersed in them. After working as Junior Doctor, I realised I wasn’t sure about it as a career as my love for the mountains was greater and I wanted to live a more simple life.”
However, it hasn’t all been a walk in the park (or mountains) as injuries raised their head. In the past, Anna has competed in some World Cup ice climbing championships but annoyingly a shoulder injury changed the course of her life, hence the move to the Alps to focus on her favourite hobby- Alpinism, rather than competing. Her carefree attitude was infectious and little golden nuggets of inspiration kept appearing – “Just shoot really high and even if you don’t make it, you’ll still end up doing something really cool” .
For Anna, Lockdown was a time for change and Anna achieved qualifications in leading and is a regular climbing instructor in the Scottish Highlands. Though she loves this, she knew the time had come for a challenge. Anna said;
“I read a lot of books, but Martin Moran’s book written in 1985 inspired me to complete the Munro challenge. I loved the mindset. Lists appeal to me and this was a challenge very well matched to my skills. I’ve always been the type of person to drag my friends up at 3am in the morning just so we are ready for sunrise in the hills. Being out at night in the dark is entirely normal for me and doing big mountain days on my own was and is something I’ve always been comfortable with. This really helped me with the Winter round. I was also very good friends with Tom Balmer who sadly died, but he was an Alpinist who had challenged himself to an Alps winter challenge soloing all the north faces of the Alps and the idea of these seasonal challenges really appeal to me”.
Anna seemed well grounded for this challenge given her background, playing to her strengths, though admitted she only had a couple of days to prepare a route. She had to group hill tops together to decrease the number of days on the challenge and provide maximum efficiency on the hill days themselves. It’s possible to club together quite a few, and I wasn’t surprised to hear Anna was ambitious in how many she paired together on a regular basis.
Thinking about planning to walk 282 Munros sounds like a logistical nightmare in the space of three months to me, but Anna shrugged this off – as a guide, Anna is obsessed with checking forecasts, so was very used to this. “I just got a huge munro map and circled all my trips and went with it. I took any weather window I could” .
The weather is certainly one of our biggest contenders up here in the Highlands, and Anna shared a tip that I will take with me: “I thought to myself what makes weather bad? I came up with a grim scale – the factors of wind, poor vis, darkness, snow, underfoot conditions, being wet and being cold. When you only have one or two of those things it’s not so bad” .
Though, I did ask Anna what her most challenging day was and that included a day in Glencoe that ended up much windier that forecasted.
“The winds were insane – 115km an hour. I was on my own with zero visibility and hail was blasting in my face. The wind wasn’t constant, and it was just these epic blasts from different directions. There were icy boulders on the ground, so I didn’t feel secure, but I told myself I’d crawl if it meant I made it.”
Anna’s days off seemed to luckily fall on the very worst of the weather days, but there weren’t many rest days – if the weather was good, Anna was out. A smile was on my face as Anna went on to say that she had started running the Munros, and by the end started to see why running is such a fantastic way to see the mountains to which I absolutely agreed.
Her favourite mountain day was Beinn Sgritheall on the Glenelg Peninsula as she walked up and paraglided off the mountain. I agreed it sounds much easier on the knees! Anna was worried she would be criticised for not being a purist completing the hills totally by foot, but carrying up a huge paraglider doesn’t sound like cheating to me. As she noted “I had a turning point moment where I realised this was my round and I had the self-confidence to do this my way. I realised how much this meant to me personally and it was my choice how I bagged the Munros.”
Annas last Munro was Cairngorm near Aviemore, and she was joined by many fans she’d collected on the way through social media and her supportive family and friends. It wouldn’t be right to end in summer weather, so Anna was gifted crazy windy but big blue skies and with Annas grim scale, she saw this as a major win.
My parting question was why others should pursue an idea into a challenge. Anna’s wise words were;
“I think it’s about what you are good at and what your strengths are. What’s unique to you? If you really want to do something, go do it. If you have no motivation for something, the passions it not there and it won’t work. For me, I wanted to get this challenge done for me, and I did it”.
Anna is writing a book all about her adventure and you can keep up with her latest expeditions @rocksandtrails
Images courtesy: Anna Wells
