After losing his only son Elliott, aged 5, in December 2022, Reading local Chris Peto and nine of his friends took to complete The National 24-hour Three Peaks Challenge to raise awareness for Rhabdomyosarcoma, an aggressive childhood cancer.

The Three Peaks challenge involves climbing Ben Nevis, followed by Scafell Pike, and finally Snowdon.

As if this challenging hike wasn’t enough, the group was also dressed as superheroes for the duration, paying tribute to Elliott’s love of superheroes.

Mr Peto’s 'Superpeaks: Three Peaks for Elliott' raised over £6500 and counting towards new research into treatments for the terrible disease that lost him his son.

He said: “Research into treatment for childhood cancer in the UK is massively underfunded.

“It is the number one killer of children under 14 years old, yet only 4 new drugs have been approved in the last 20 years.”

Although the team was relatively young and fit, they had never completed such a challenge together and had been training intensely for the last 3 months.

The group arrived in full costume at the foot of Ben Nevis ready to begin the 6 am hike on Saturday, October 21.

The weekend saw disastrous weather conditions caused by Storm Babet, and the group climbed the first peak in torrential rain, which eventually became a snow blizzard as they reached the summit. 

After completing the second peak at 8:30 pm, they were told by their driver that their minibus had broken down due to two flat tyres.

With only one spare tyre and a limited phone signal, the group had to hike an additional two miles to meet where the minibus was stranded and await breakdown assistance.

As the location was so remote, the team was told that they would not get assistance until 10am the next morning, four hours after the intended deadline.

They spent the night crammed into the bus together, and in the morning decided that Snowdon was no longer an option.

Mr Peto said: “I am proud to say that in spite of us all feeling so dejected, we made the unanimous decision that we would seek out an appropriate alternative peak to complete the challenge.”

The team hiked the two miles back to the National Trust car park and were advised by local peak expert Lindsay Buck on what alternative mountain they could climb.

They decided on Great Gable, which has a summit height of 899m.