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Ten Tors is an annual weekend hike organised and run in early May for 2,500 young people by the British Army on Dartmoor.
Teams of six are required to visit ten tors; on the top of each tor is a checkpoint. There are three levels of difficulty, Bronze (35 miles), Silver (45 miles) and Gold (55 miles). Each team has a captain and a navigator and normally train for a few months before the event.
Participants arrive at Okehampton camp on the Friday afternoon before the hike and are given briefings and their equipment is checked. Teams must carry all their food, tents, stoves, emergency rations and a first aid kit; in the past they would have collected drinking water from the moor and used water purification tablets, but recent problems with cryptosporidium mean water is provided at each checkpoint.
All the teams start on the Saturday from the base at Okehampton. There is 13 hours of walking on the first day, and teams are not allowed to pass the eighth tor until the second day. Those trying for a Bronze medal must camp on one of the tors, Silver and Gold teams can camp anywhere on the moor. The finish line is the same as the starting point, back in Okehampton.
The Army use it as a large scale logistics exercise. Officially the event is not a race, but teams often compete to see who can make it back to the base first.
The event was first held in 1959. It was cancelled in 2001 because of foot and mouth disease but went ahead in 2003 despite the War in Iraq. In 2004 the event was held on May 15-16.
External links
Ten Tors website at Exeter University (http://www.ex.ac.uk/its/tentors/)
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