UKH

Kelli Roberts has beaten the women's fastest known time on the Cuillin Ridge Traverse with a time of 5:56:46, despite soaring temperatures. There's little information about the previous women's FKT, but it is believed to be Anna Wells' time of 6:34 set in 2016.

Cracking effort Kelli and Pete!

850ml of water.  Bloody hell.  I carted almost 7kg of water with me.  Guess that explains a) Why I didn't get dehydrated and b) why it took me 3 times as long

awesome job

I did it over two days, in cool weather and drank a 1.5 litres each day. So running it in hot weather in under 6 hrs is just stunning.

Yup!

FKT?

It says what that means in the first sentence of the report. I wasn't familiar with the acronym either.

Fastest Known Time

I think we should adopt this in climbing. First Known Ascent. We have to assume some quiet badass did it earlier.

It's not strictly speaking an acronym, it's an initialism. Whatever, it's very obscure. Perhaps we should all try, in this new world gone mad/infantile, to use them a little bit less?

I agree.

In climbing we often talk about first recorded ascent. In a way that applies to all FAs, though of course sometimes you can be pretty certain something hasn't been done before. 

I hate running but even I knew what a FKT is. It's really not that obscure if, like on UKC, you read the occasional story of someone running round the Lakes, or the Pennine Way etc.

Great achievement, well done! Also, agreed on the FKT thing, not something to be used in the headline in my opinion.

Its obscurity depends on the environments in which you operate. It's a very common term in distance and endurance events of this nature. It distinguishes these efforts from 'records' for a number of reasons:

 - there are often no 'official' bodies with which to register achievements

 - some people will choose not to record or publicise their achievements 

 - 'records' on events such as this are very dependent on the prevailing conditions, so achievements may not be directly comparable. 

Yes, it shows my ignorance of endurance events. I never subjected myself to that stuff.

"aspirant Cuillin Ridge baggers need to .... climb the main pitches on the Traverse."

Who says?

I think maybe it should say those trying to run records.

Well known in mountain running etc which is what this article is about.

It's even worse than being a silly initialism - Fastest should be Shortest or Best. Fastest Known Time makes no sense when you think about it, so SKT or BKT would be improvements, albeit slight...

Mental! Bloody well done!! 

Another congrats in a thread of semantics! Absolutely awesome year for records and runs.

But it is on a climbing website. I only came across it for the first time very recently on here.

Apologies for spoiling Kelli's achievement with semantic nonsense - I am very impressed with the efforts she went to do the traverse properly solo. I practised all the climbing up and down (in Walshes) so I could have theoretically soloed the whole thing without a rope, but I drew the line at Naismith's route on the Tooth, which I always found really terrifying. We always carried a short rope on our attempts anyway because my old mate Chip was not up to such antics, and I'm not sure climbing carefully solo saves much time, just the weight of a short thin rope (which he had to carry...)

Congratulations on Traverse in that stupid heat. I'm not one for style or records and you made it to Sgurr nan Gillean which is always the main objective IMHO.

What I am interested in is the recorded height gain only being 4,300 feet. I haven't got a print out of the only time I had an accurate measurement of this but it was almost exactly 3000 metres. It was the traditional historic line starting from Gars-bheinn, adhering to the crest via all the tops on the way with the only deviation to Alasdair. TD, King's and Naismith's were all used.

Given so many now have the ability I'm wondering if anyone else has got records of their own ascent figures from end to end? 

Just did a quick counting contours, Gars to Gillean in 2250m ascent, including Dubh Mor, the four climbs and Bidein. That's being slightly lenient on figures to account for the notches and spikes etc so I think the true figure would be pretty close to that.

It is usual, if you are going to introduce initialisms into the text, that you add the initialism in brackets, after the first use of the term. So, the simple answer would have been to have written:

"Kelli Roberts has beaten the women's fastest known time (FKT) on the Cuillin Ridge Traverse"

That 4300 elevation gain is wildly out. I've never used Strava but I hear it's dodgy for that.

I've always understood it's 3000m (give or take) Gars-bheinn to Gillean, including all the obstacles on the ridge crest and Alasdair. A number of books say that. So it works out as a 4000m day once you've accounted for getting onto Gars-bheinn - and my legs wouldn't disagree. 

I think counting contours is liable to prove a very blunt instrument given the illegible complexities of the OS 10m contours, and the fact that Harveys 15m contours are likely to miss a great many of the micro ups-and-downs.

In this age of gadgets someone must have a plausible figure that's not based on the map alone?

Time is a bourgeois concept.

I already do that!

My 3000m measurement was way back in early 2000's and can't remember the device but it was connected to a heart monitor as well. Just wondering if Strava and more modern systems can't cope with the sheer speed of variation between up and down that occurs? Seems unlikely but also unusual that there's not a bunch of folk suddenly able to lay their hands on figures. Maybe ask Finlay when he's recovered from yesterday's efforts.

Indeed Classic Rock gives it 10,000ft, which is similar.