bloody irresponsible fellrunners

It doesn't happen too often, but I giggle when it does. You're running around some godforsaken fellside in the cold and the fog wearing a pair of shorts, a tshirt and a bumbag and out of the mist looms a single, or more likely a group of heavily clad walkers. You know the type. Goretex tops and bottoms, boots made of something dead, 40-60 litre packs, mapcases fluttering in the wind.
Instead of a cheery "hello" which most people tend to use for greeting, you'll get a "bloody irresponsible fell runner... out in these conditions wearing nothing at all. You're the reason Mountain Rescue Teams get called out.".

Typical irresponsible fellrunner

Which is the funny part.
Looking at Edale Mountain Rescues stats from this last year of 151 rescues, 1 of them was a runner. (51 were walkers...)  - and can you believe it, I can't find the webpage now.... Ah heck, lets just look at the stats for the whole of Britain actually. (this time I DO have the site!) in 2017 there were 1468 rescues across all areas. There were 34 Fellrunning incidents - with 27 subjects. So 2% of people picked up by MRT are runners. Right.
How about hillwalkers? Well there are probably a lot more hill walkers in the UK than there are fellrunners, so that's going to skew the statistics, right. True, but 1119 incidents were for the hillwalking fraternity - with 1061 subjects. And that doesn't include DofE - they're in a stats box of their own, so you can't blame them.

So, excitingly, as a fellrunner I'm somewhat less likely to need to callout MRT - or indeed have someone else call them out on my behalf. Which is partly what makes me giggle.

There was a bit of an argument on facebook a while back about wearing shorts in the hills, and about if you broke a leg, how hard it would be to put on waterproof trousers. The guy talking about this was essentially saying that if he was out walking, wearing trousers, it would be really easy for him to put on waterproof trousers in the event of him breaking a leg, whereas a runner in shorts would be in a totally different situation.

ah, the 2 litre bumbag. What could you possibly fit in there?

I had to beg to differ - if you're lying on the floor, screaming in agony because you've just broken a leg, I'd say that it doesn't matter WHAT you're wearing, it is going to be just as much fun putting on a a pair of waterproof trousers with a broken femur. But I kind of digress.

So what to actually carry?

If you're a walker, you'll have a hard time believing it, but in that tiny bumbag (or, more likely, a race
vest, these days), you can get a fair heap of stuff. There have been a number of reviews on this site over the past few years, but they have tailed off recently. The main reason for that is because I've got a load of kit that works, and hasn't broken yet. No-one gives me anything to review, so its all bought, and I like things to last.

So what's in there?
SOL bivvy bag. It's still going! (that's since 2013)
OMM aether Smock - It's still going! (blimey, I bought that in 2014)
Berghaus vapourlight Hypertherm - It's still going! (I got that before the Spine!)
Montane Prism Mitts - They're not exactly still going - Im on my second pair.
Extremeties Tuffbags- waterproof overmitts in case it gets really grim
A whistle
a headtorch (petzl reaktik+- make sure you know how to lock it)
Phone
compass
emergency gel

Ok- so in this picture there is no Aether - it's the Berghaus Hyperlight Smock. Still taped and waterproof though.

On warm days with no chance of rain I'll swap out the Aether for a Berghaus hyperlight smock (technically its waterproof, but I wouldnt like to be out in grim weather in it) which is lighter and more packable.
Very very very very occasionally I'll pack a pair of waterproof trousers- Berghaus Paclites, or, if I'm actually going to use them- Montane eVent trousers (yup... they're still going as well).

Which, all told, I'm not sure what else you'd have in a rucksack- maybe more extra layers? more food? a thermos flask? Who knows. Maybe they take it for when they inevitably have to sit down and wait for mountain rescue?
Ok, that's going a bit far, sorry about that.

A quick note on some of those items above- The Aether is still being made, as are the Sol bivvy bags and the Prism mitts. The Vapourlight Hypertherm appears to have been discontinued, which is a shame- but there are other products around like it (even if they aren't quite as light) such as the Montane Fireball, inov8 thermoshell etc. It appears to have been superceded by jackets with hydrodown, which Im sure are fine, but I haven't needed to buy to try out.
The Hyper light berghaus "waterproof" is now called the hyper 100 shell, and is now a 3layer waterproof!
Now I'm getting into other stuff which was not the point of this blog in the first place... looks like I might have to write something else with a bit more detail as to what might be good this year....

Anyhow. The point of this blog is simply to say, if you see a fellrunner out and about with just shorts and a tshirt on, carrying what appears to be a bumbag or rucksack too small to carry anything in, be nice, say hi. Don't moan about the fact they'll be the ones calling mountain rescue, chances are, they ARE mountain rescue. 

It isn't the runners you want to be worried about, anyway... its the walkers wandering around with guidebooks following terrible route descriptions and hand-drawn paper maps that are getting shredded in the rain - but that's another post away.