SAFETY
How We Keep a Mixed-Fitness Team Safe on the Yorkshire Three Peaks
If you’re organising a Three Peaks challenge for your team, the question underneath every other question is usually the same one: what happens if someone can’t keep up, or can’t finish? It’s the right question to ask, and it deserves a proper answer before you book — not after.
Why this matters more with us than it might elsewhere
Before founding Ikigai Adventures, I spent four years with the RAF Mountain Rescue Service, and years more responding to walkers who’d got into difficulty in exactly this kind of terrain — the Dales, the Lakes, North Wales, the Peak District. That background doesn’t just inform how I guide; it shapes how every one of our challenges is planned, staffed, and run, long before anyone laces up a boot.
A team day out is not the same as a solo expedition. Your group will include people at very different fitness levels, some who’ve trained for months and some who signed up three weeks ago on a whim. Planning for that range — not just for the strongest walkers — is the actual job.
- Guide ratios that actually work: We keep an 8:1 participant-to-guide ratio as standard, so no group is too large for a guide to know exactly where everyone is and how everyone’s doing, at all times.
- Qualified mountain leadership: Every guide is a qualified, experienced mountain leader — not a fitness instructor with a map. Route decisions, pacing, and weather calls are made by people who have done exactly this in genuinely difficult conditions.
- Built-in drop-out points: We agree checkpoints and options in advance, so if someone needs to stop, there is always a pre-planned, safe way off the hill — not an improvised one.
- Honest pre-event conversation: We ask about fitness levels and any concerns before the day, so pacing and route decisions reflect your actual team, not an assumed “average” group.
- First response, not just first aid: Every guide carries the training and kit to respond immediately if someone is struggling — physically or otherwise — rather than waiting for it to become a bigger problem.
If someone can’t finish
It happens — and it isn’t a failure of the day. If a member of your team needs to stop, they’re guided safely off the route at the nearest suitable point, never left alone, and never made to feel like they’ve let the group down. The rest of the team can continue if that’s the right call, or the whole group can adjust pace together — that decision is made on the day, based on what’s actually best for your people, not a rigid script.
“He is also a totally unflappable guide with enormous experience, patience, and ability to lead and motivate without pushing people beyond their capabilities.”
What this means for you, practically
If you’re the person putting your name behind this booking — an HR lead, a charity coordinator, a team organiser — here’s the honest version of what you’re getting: a day that’s genuinely challenging, properly planned for a mixed-ability group, and run by someone whose actual training is in getting people to safety, not just getting them up a hill.
If you’d like to talk through your specific team — numbers, fitness levels, any concerns — before booking, get in touch. That conversation is part of how every one of our challenges is planned, not an afterthought.