By Claire Fitton and Gabriele Matilionyte

 

Are your New Year’s resolutions still active? In case you are in need of some motivation, we thought we would share this inspiring story by two ladies from our 2018 IWS group, Claire Fitton and Gabriele Matilionyte, who climbed Schiehallion at the end of 2018!

[Gabriele]

 

We had a very chilled out night in a pub catching up on personal and professional news, discussing ingenious ways of how we are winning in life, listening to Irish live music, petting and trying to steal random dogs (me).. On Saturday morning we set off to conquer a Munro that was a 40min drive from Pitlochry. We chose Schiehallion because it is categorised as one of the easiest Munros to bag (not so true..). As we started driving we could already see this mighty mountain from far away. Claire and I just couldn’t stop laughing as we got closer to it – it was just there sticking out of all hills and it was obvious what we got ourselves into.

As you can see from photos, we conquered Schiehallion in phases of excitement, disbelief, denial, trust, encouragement, excitement and proudness. As we got to the entrance we were so excited to be hiking that big mountain. Literally 5mins into the hike I was giving up. I told Claire that this happens to me all the time – I am very over-ambitious and set incredibly high goals. At that point I was so upset and disappointed. But I cannot thank enough Claire for being amazing and encouraging me that we should keep on going and just see what we can achieve. We decided to do the hike in small steps – I had to catch my breath very often (lifters do not have stamina!). But after a certain stage into our hike I started believing in myself.  And 3hours later we were there – at the summit of Schiehallion! My first ever personal Munro and we did it for all of IWScot2018! It took me almost the entire week to recover from muscle pain but I am all hooked up now and I am definitely going try and bag my second Munro soon.

[Claire]

 

You can’t help but notice its exactly like the metaphors people use as motivation for life’s challenges; the task that seems so unachievable is your mountain, but taking it just one small step at a time, you surprise even yourself on what you can achieve! Using the support of others around you, learning to be proud of the small achievements that are mounting into a big achievement, you start to see the summit is in reach! But it’s a false summit and you have to keep pushing, and again, and again, but now you can’t stop until you get there because you’ve come so far, and eventually… your efforts are rewarded and you’ve conquered the mountain (or technically the munro)!! And like most of us ingenious women, we are guilty of not basking in our achievement at the top because it’s on to the next thing (or in this case getting out of the roaring winds at -5 degrees!).

 

But reflecting on it I think what an adventure and what an achievement! I’m so glad we did it, and more importantly I’m so glad we bought gloves before going up there!