Kendal Mountain Festival – Review

We peg down in the Lake District for the world’s leading adventure festival…

Cool Camping pegged down in the Lake District for a weekend of outdoor fun at the world’s leading adventure festival…

With legs burning from the steady climb out
of town, I clamber over the first wooden style and set off across the fields,
stumbling through the stoney mud towards Scout Scar. A damp mist has settled
within the dips and troughs of the landscape and, into the blanket of white, a
string of fellow runners are disappearing before me. Threaded through the
bracken, as far as the mist reveals us, we canter along in a train through the Middle Earth-like setting. The beautifully rugged landscape could indeed be
something out of Tolkein, though the unquestionable English-ness of it all is
comically apparent every time a cow looms into view, grazing on the trailside.

Ordinarily, a race like this may merit a
little attention – a few weeks of training perhaps and then a big day where it
becomes the centre-point of the runner’s mind. Today however, it’s a mere side
note. In fact, most people don’t seem aware it’s even happening. That’s because
the slopes that begin to fall away beneath me, tumbling down in pockets of moss-covered rocks and banks of foot-print spattered greenery, are leading into the town of Kendal – home to the world’s biggest outdoor
festival.

Taking over town every November for four
days of all things outdoors, Kendal Mountain Festival is the throbbing heart of
adventure in the UK. It’s not just the heritage of the Lake District that it
can lay claim to but also the captive energy of over 10,000 visitors who
arrive each year for their fix of outdoor fun. At its core
are the films – 70 different stories screened throughout the weekend,
all competing for 11 coveted awards. It’s pretty difficult to watch all during
the time you’re there and, inevitably, painful decisions have to be made, but the
diversity of the films and the tales they tell is staggering.

The melting pot of outdoor activities inevitably
began with the climbing films. China Jam – in which three Frenchmen and a Belgian trek into one of the most isolated parts
of China – enthralled an audience who watched specks of men on an icy rock face
scale Kyzyl Asker, a 1,200m vertical pillar. Despite 14 nights hanging from the
cliff, blizzards, frostbite and howling winds they still complete the feat with
a banjo and xylophone on their backs, amusingly brought out every evening for a
morale-boosting music session. This was just one of the many climbing films, with the category
ultimately won by a story from across the pond. Sufferfest II featured many of the hallmarks of films throughout
the festival: feather down jackets, mud-plastered faces, ripped-skin fingers
and ‘rad’ Americans telling us all how ‘stoked’ they are. The sheer sense of fun conveyed, coupled with a serious amount of sportsmen’s suffering proved a worthy winning combination.

The high peaks and climbing lines stood in
contrast to films like The Cave
Connection – following underground adventurers exploring the grottos of New
Zealand – or the slower pace of choices like Where
Walking Took Me, and the selection of ‘Culture and Environment’ films.
Skiing, snowboarding, kayaking, slack-lining, mountain biking, base jumping and
running were all comprehensively covered, set against invigorating mountain
backdrops and filmed by world-renowned directors. All seem crafted to both
amaze but still inspire you, relating to an audience of fellow outdoor
enthusiasts. If my run felt like somewhat of a mere side-note that morning, it certainly
did by the time I had watched Kilian Jornet in Déjame Vivir battling his way to victory on Mount Elbrus – a Russian
running course so savage there were just six entrants in the race, only two of whom
actually finished.

No matter how gripping the films succeed in
being, there is certainly a point where hours of staring at a screen wear thin.
Splintering out from this core of the festival, then, is a whole host of other
events and activities vying for your attention, not least talks from those at
the forefront of the footage. Speed mountaineer Ulei Steck, who holds the
record for scaling the North Face of the Eiger, popped in for an hour and a
half of chit-chat fresh from the Himalayas, while famous mountaineers like Sir
Chris Bonington and similarly speedy Chris Profit also entertained an audience
in sites such as the Kendal Town Hall and the local school.

Just as with the films, speed and
adrenaline were contrasted with more carefully-paced adventures, most notable a
Sunday morning talk from Tim Cope, an Australian adventurer who spent three
years on horseback retracing the ancient nomadic routes of Genghis Khan’s
Mongolian empire. A life-changing trilogy of seasons saw him battle through
summer sands, winter freezes and lush spring plains with his horses and trusty
dog Tigon, finishing in Hungary and returning to a world drastically changed since
his departure. His warmest tales were borne largely out of the hospitality he
received along the way, living and breathing a nomadic life with some of the
few remaining people on earth who continue to live this traditional existence.

Other clusters of activity generally
focused around the towns Brewery Arts Centre, aptly re-named the festival ‘base
camp’, where tents in the car park played host to shopping, promotional stands
and a free Himalayan breakfast come Saturday morning. Here a general buzz of
visitors, flicking through their festival programme, could indulge in some of
the fringe events, the photography competition or a collection of the year’s
best mountain literature – part of the prestigious literary competition also
announcing its winners that weekend.

The festival ends with re-screenings of
those films that won the all-important awards, a high note to head home on.
Those, like us, departing a little early, got to end by listening to the final
speaker of the weekend, seating ourselves in a cinema room with the smell of
the morning’s wild cooking demonstration still fresh in our nostrils. Dave Cornthwaite, an enthusiastic adventurer with a ‘nothing’s impossible’ attitude
and self-deprecating sense of humour, talked us through his transformation
from couch potato to record-setting wanderer. The same depressing ginger facial
hair of a PlayStation-fixated 20 year-old suddenly appeared as the wily
beard of an outdoorsmen as he skipped from skateboarding across Australia to
swimming the Missouri River to paddleboarding the Mississippi to cycling the
American coastline. His Say Yes More
slogan and ‘can-do’ philosophy made him one of the most fitting speakers to end the
event, leaving festival goers keen to head out into the surrounding Lakes
rather than back home to work the next morning. It also made for a handy festival
marketing ploy – Will we be back to Kendal next year? …unequivocally Yes.

For more information about Kendal Mountain Festival and a full list of the weekends film, art and literature winners visit their website.

By James Warner Smith, 26th November 2014