Fort William Mountain Festival has something for every kind of hill-goer

Scotland’s mountain-going community is hugely diverse – on any given weekend, on any of the country’s Munros, Corbetts, Grahams and Donalds, you might find climbers and hikers, skiers and snowboarders, artists and photographers, mountain bikers and paragliders, twitchers and botanists. Month after month, year after year, these people are drawn back to the same remote, high places, yet they all look at them through very different eyes: the climber typically seeks the most challenging route to the top of a mountain while the skier looks for the most exciting route to the bottom; the paraglider tries to predict where the best thermals will be, while the photographer aims to reach the best possible viewpoint in the best possible light conditions. And yeah, the twitchers never seem to be satisfied until they’ve managed to spy at least one ptarmigan.

Nepali climber Nirmal 'Nims' Purja standing at the summit of Gasherbrum II on 18 July 2019. The mountaineer went on to smash the speed record for summiting the world's 14 highest peaks, racing up all the "8000ers" in just six months and six days PIC: AFP via Getty Images

On the whole, those who choose to either climb up mountains or slide down them tend to receive the lion’s share of the limelight, but one of the many great things about the Fort William Mountain Festival, which kicks off this week and mostly takes place at the Nevis Centre, is that it caters to a broad spectrum of mountain-lovers, and seems determined to show that there are about as many different ways to have fun in the hills as there are different kinds of people.


The range of films screening as part of the International Film Night on Thursday speaks volumes. The film 8,000 tells the remarkable story of French paraglider Antoine Girard, whose ambition is to achieve a world-first by soaring higher than 8,000 metres – above 8,051m Broad Peak in the Karakoram mountains of Pakistan, to be precise. With his oxygen starting to fail at a critical moment, Antoine finds himself with some tricky sums to do under extreme pressure, but happily he just-so-happens to be a computer science professor at the University of Grenoble, so has better-than-average maths skills to fall back on. Similarly off the beaten track is the film Ice and Palms, which follows Jochen Mesle and Max Kroneck on an ambitious six-week bikepacking and skiing trip through the Alps, starting from their home in the south of Germany and ending at the Mediterranean. If there’s a peculiar satisfaction that comes from skiing down a mountain you’ve just climbed, presumably cycling up a steep incline to the base of the mountain first makes that feeling even sweeter.


Elsewhere in the programme – specifically as part of the Running Night at the Nevis Centre on Friday – there will be a chance to hear from Irish fell runner Paul Tierney, whose first thought, when he looks up at a steep, gnarly mountainside, must be something along the lines of  “Oh wow, I can’t wait to run to the top of that thing!”


Tierney first started running long distances 11 years ago, and has represented Ireland at the World Ultra Trail Championships on four occasions. In 2015 he won the Lakeland 100, a 105 mile circuit of the Lake District, and he is a previous record holder for the Wicklow Way in Ireland. But that’s nothing compared to his pet project for 2019, which saw him run all 214 Lakeland Fells in an new record time of six days, six hours and five minutes, breaking Steve Birkinshaw’s record of six days and 13 hours, set in 2014.


The Fort William Mountain Festival is doing an admirable job, then, of trying to cater to as many different kinds of mountain-user as possible, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t know its core market, and there’s still plenty to keep the hardcore climbers entertained. 


As part of the International Film Night, there will be a screening of Kevin Woods’ film The 24/8, in which the now-legendary Scottish climber Dave MacLeod sets out to climb all the different kinds of route – boulder, sport route, trad route and winter route – to a grade eight standard on or around Ben Nevis in a period of 24 hours. Oh, and just to make life really interesting he also chucks eight Munro summits into the mix. 
Those looking to take their climbing to the next level, meanwhile, should check out the Climbers Summit on Thursday, hosted by Mike Pescod, where the topic under discussion will be Nutrition for Climbers. Guest speakers include diet and climbing experts Rebecca Dent, Sarah Kekus and Mina Leslie-Wujastyk. 


And finally, those looking for a good, old-fashioned, Man vs Mountain yarn should check out the Mountaineering Night on Saturday, where the guest speaker will be Nirmal ‘Nims’ Purja MBE, who last year summited Earth’s 14 tallest mountains in just six months and six days, smashing the previous record of almost eight years. 



www.mountainfestival.co.uk