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Snowdon

Four Years On

In September 2022 I went up Snowdon in my wheelchair for Pulling Together Up Snowdon. I tore my rotator cuff early on and pushed for about seven hours with it torn. That was the last major event of my 19 years as a full-time wheelchair user.

On 17 October 2026 I went back and walked it. Up the Snowdon Ranger Path, down the Llanberis Path, carrying an 8kg pack. I set off at 08:17 and finished at 18:47.

I expected it to be easier than the wheelchair. It wasn't.

The Numbers Before the Start

I didn't arrive rested. The day before was a cross-country travel day: Leeds, Manchester, Bangor, Caernarfon, with about two hours of walking. I slept 4 hours 46 minutes. It was clear and still in the valley at 6°C, feeling like 4°C with 93% humidity, and colder higher up.

HRV measures the variation in time between heartbeats. Higher usually means the nervous system is recovered; lower means it is under strain. My own rule is that a seated HRV reading only counts once heart rate and stress have settled for 15 to 20 minutes. Seven minutes isn't that. I went anyway, and I'm noting it here because the rule is there for a reason.

The Climb

The start went well. I was surprised by how quickly I was walking. Twenty minutes in, my blood pressure was 171/84. That's a normal response to exercise for most people. For me it is different. I have structural baroreflex failure: the pressure sensors that should keep my blood pressure in range don't work, so nothing reliably stops it going much higher or crashing much lower. Getting it wrong isn't a bad day. It's a medical emergency. Once I was upright and climbing, I stopped checking it. A reading I couldn't act on wasn't going to help. What mattered was getting ahead of the causes: keeping warm, because cold triggers vasoconstriction and warmth opens the blood vessels; timing my carbohydrate, because a rise in blood glucose pulls my blood pressure down; and catching the vasoconstriction before it took hold. That had to be done proactively, all day, or it would have turned into the emergency I was trying to avoid.

The steep section

Then I reached the steep part of the Ranger Path: gradients of 25 to 28% or more, rocky, with very high steps. I couldn't lift my right leg high enough to get onto some of them. In places I had to hold the rock above me and pull myself up. There was a steep drop on one side, so I kept to the mountainside in case I stumbled.

The data shows exactly where this happened. For the first two thirds of the climb I was gaining height steadily, at about 230 metres an hour. In the final third that fell to about 150 metres an hour, and my heart rate fell with it, from the high 140s to 138. My heart had more to give. My legs couldn't lift me any faster.

What my heart was doing

The climb took 4 hours 27 minutes: 2 hours 43 minutes on the move and 1 hour 44 minutes of stops. My average heart rate was 144, and I spent 114 minutes above 150, which is higher than I'd normally allow. But the pattern held all the way up. I'd push to 155 to 165, then recover by 20 to 35 beats within two to four minutes. The last recovery, near the summit, was as big as the first ones. Fatigue didn't wear that down.

The Summit

I spent about an hour and a half at the top. For my body, that was too long. Without my leg muscles pumping, blood pools in my legs, and the cold makes my blood vessels clamp down. At 13:35 my blood pressure read 113/86. That narrow gap between the two numbers suggests my heart was pumping less blood with each beat. My heart rate stayed between 106 and 131 the whole time I was stopped. Fifteen minutes later my blood pressure read 140/94.

That swing is what I call square-wave haemodynamics: my blood pressure snapping between high and low instead of settling, recorded as it happened. These were two readings from a wrist cuff in the cold, so I'm treating them as a strong hint rather than proof. Next time, I'll limit the summit stop to 30 minutes, with an extra layer on and keep moving.

The Descent

The descent was horrific, almost from the summit station down.

My knees have no cartilage left. The only things controlling each step down were my thigh and calf muscles. Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome means I dislocate or partly dislocate joints every day, and I also have bone-on-bone osteoarthritis and osteoporosis. One misplaced step could have put a knee out.

The railway track

The track down from the summit station was easier underfoot, but the loose ballast slid under my feet and I slipped several times. I ended up walking along the rails and the concrete plinths that hold them, because they gave me more grip. Every footstep sent pain through the patellar tendons in both knees. The joint line of my right knee was the worst of it.

The fence line

The next steep section, beside the fence, was worse still. My pace collapsed, and the data shows it. The first quarter of the descent dropped at about 275 metres an hour. For the rest of the descent I managed 180 to 200 metres an hour. My heart rate on the way down never went above 134.

The lane into Llanberis

The sun was setting by the time I reached the bottom of the path, and I'd forgotten how steep the lane down into Llanberis is. My walking poles were brilliant, but I was getting slower and slower. Sunset was around 18:10. I finished at 18:47, so the last part was in failing light.

The descent took 4 hours 31 minutes.

The Part the Data Missed

On paper the descent was the easy half: lower heart rate, less effort, a low training score. In reality it was the hardest thing I've done. Harder than the 148-mile Dunwich Dynamo Plus.

Two things show the real cost. Late in the descent, on gentler ground and at a similar speed, my heart rate and breathing both started rising again, to about 121 to 124 beats and 29 to 31 breaths a minute. Pain is the most likely driver. Fluid loss after 10 hours on my feet and the falling temperature probably contributed too.

The second is the mental load, which no sensor records. For four and a half hours I had to think about every footstep. One misplaced foot could dislocate or partly dislocate a toe, a knee or a hip, and with osteoporosis, a fall could easily mean a fracture. At the same time I was managing everything else my body needs on a normal day:

• Fuelling, with gastroparesis and chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction, where more than about 50g of carbohydrate a day causes faecal incontinence, and there are no toilets on the mountain.
• Drinking enough water.
• Staying warm, because severe vasoconstriction gives me intense chest pain.
• Not becoming a casualty that someone else has to rescue.

For Prosthetic Physiology this is an important result. My data prosthesis, heart rate and HRV, rated the hardest part of the day as the easiest. Pain and joint load need their own inputs. Heart data alone will under-count days like this.

The Recovery

I went for a gentle walk after dinner on Saturday to loosen up. On Sunday my muscles were tight, and for the first time in my life I had DOMS (delayed-onset muscle soreness). I then sat on cold trains for about seven hours to get home. When I reached Peterborough station I physically couldn't stand up, and I got a taxi home. Seven hours seated in the cold, with chronic venous insufficiency, straight after the mountain, was a second load on my circulation, not rest.

The worst point wasn't the evening after the hike. It was the next morning.

Waking up worse than I finished is what I call the Lag Factor: the cost of a hard day doesn't arrive on the day, it arrives later. Even so, my nervous system cleared in about 36 hours, inside my usual 48. My muscles and joints were a different matter. Three days later, I still couldn't bend my right knee enough to get on a bike.

A careful comparison

My old benchmark was about 2 hours 20 minutes on my feet with 8kg on poor sleep, which once dropped my HRV to 6ms. This was 10 and a half hours, and the lowest overnight reading was 17ms. That's far better than I'd have predicted. But the 6ms was a daytime spot reading and the 17ms is an overnight average, so they aren't the same measurement. Based on one day, the honest conclusion is "much better than expected", not "I can now do 10 hours".

Wheelchair Versus Walking

The wheelchair was much easier. In 2022 my arms did the work for about seven hours, on a torn rotator cuff, and that pain still wasn't as bad as this descent. This time, two knees with no cartilage took four and a half hours of downhill loading.

My heart data suggests real progress. My lowest heart rate during sleep is now about 48 to 51 beats a minute, against a flat 60 to 62 in 2022, and I recovered far faster after a much bigger physical day. The 2022 readings came from a wrist sensor and the 2026 ones from a chest strap, so I'm not comparing peaks or training zones between the two.

The Kit

Staying warm wasn't comfort. Cold triggers my vasoconstriction, so layering was part of managing my blood pressure. This is what I carried and wore.

What This Day Proved

My heart held up on the climb: heart-rate recovery intact all the way to the summit, and little drift over four and a half hours. My nervous system was back within 36 hours. The summit blood pressure and that first night's HRV show it wasn't free. But what actually limited me was the mechanics of my joints and the mental effort of protecting them.

Did I enjoy it? It was type two fun: miserable at the time, satisfying afterwards. I never want to do that descent again. I'm proud I didn't give up, although giving up never felt like an option. As far as I was concerned, there was no way off that mountain unless I got myself off it.

I don't get good days, just normal ones. Micro-pacing and managing pain and fatigue before they hit are what let me function anyway.

Everything here describes my own physiology, recorded with consumer wearables. It is not a clinical assessment, and my thresholds and protocols are not advice for anyone else.