A Misty Friday in the Eastern Lakeland Fells

Friday 4th April 2014

A circular walk up High Street from Troutbeck 

Distance: 24km; Ascent: 1290m; Misty with light winds; with Martin

See tracked route in new window

It had been a while since I'd last been walking in the Lake District, so I made plans to head up to the Eastern Fells today in the company of Martin.  We set off walking from Church Bridge shortly before 10:30am and navigated (mainly successfully!) our way through a holiday park to reach a bridlepath, which ran roughly parallel to the main road on the other side of Trout Beck.  After a number of kilometres of reasonably level walking, we crossed Hagg Gill and ascended steeply into the mist to reach the summit of Troutbeck Tongue (Wainwright, Birkett).

Jesus Church, Troutbeck

Cairn on Troutbeck Tongue

A reasonably level ridge led northwards for around a kilometre and a half, before we picked up the line of the old High Street Roman Road and soon became to ascend steeply.   Around half way up the 500m ascent we took a short break for lunch in the mist before continuing on up to the summit of Thornthwaite Crag (Nuttall, Wainwright, Birkett).

We decided to detour northwards to visit the trigpoint on the summit of High Street (Nuttall, Marilyn, Wainwright, Birkett), before following the wall back in a SSW direction.

Thornthwaite Crag beacon

On the summit of Thornthwaite Crag

By the trig point on High Street

By the trig point on High Street

After almost re-ascending Thornthwaite Crag, we followed the ridge southwards in the mist to reach the summit of Froswick (Nuttall, Wainwright, Birkett).  It was relatively quiet on the fells today and so far we had only seen a handful of other walkers.  We stopped for a quick break on Froswick before continuing on to the twin cairns on the summit of Ill Bell (Nuttall, HuMP, Wainwright, Birkett).

Cairn on Ill Bell

Now we just had one 2000ft peak left for the day, and we soon reached the summit of Yoke (Nuttall, Wainwright, Birkett).

On the summit of Yoke

Descending the south slopes of Yoke we soon dropped out of the cloud :-)  We estimated that the cloud base was now at around 500m, having risen from below 300m when we set off walking this morning.  A pleasant walk across the Garburn Pass brought us to the summit of our next hill: Sallows (Dewey, Wainwright, Birkett).

Looking south towards Sallows

On the summit of Sallows

We followed a wall around the head of the Wardless coire with good views back to the cloud covered eastern fells.

Looking back north towards the High Street fells

Heading for Sour Howes

After a slippery stile crossing we reached the summit of Capple Howe (Birkett), our penultimate hill of the day.  A walk of a few hundred metres NW brought us to our last summit of the day: Sour Howes (Wainwright, Birkett).

On the summit of Sour Howes

Windermere from Sour Howes

We descended across Applethwaite Common with good views over Windermere to reach the Garburn Road, which we followed back down to the main road, emerging a short distance to the south of Church Bridge.

On the Garburn Road

It had been a good day's walking despite the low cloud.  Many thanks to Martin for the company; his somewhat more prompt account of today's walk can be found here.

A Snowy Day in the Coniston Fells

Friday 15th February 

A mainly misty walk up Coniston Old Man with fantastic views in the afternoon once the cloud cleared

Distance: 15km; Ascent: 990m; Misty on the summits; with Peter & Gary

See tracked route in new window

I had the day off work today and for once the weather forecast actually looked good! Therefore I decided to go hillwalking :-)   A discussion on Twitter last night resulted in me driving up to Coniston this morning to meet Peter and Gary at the high carpark on the Walna Scar Road. We had chosen this start point to give us a bit of height advantage due to the fact I couldn't get there much before 11am.

We set off walking under mostly overcast skies, with the tops of the peaks covered by the cloud. There was a bitter, brisk wind blowing as we followed the Walna Scar Road WSW below the southern slopes of The Old Man of Coniston. It had been a number of years since my last visit and in the meantime the Walna Scar Road had clearly had some significant improvement works; it was also interesting to note that it's also been reclassified as a bridleway.

Looking up to the south ridge of The Old Man of Coniston

We followed the Goat's Water track for a few hundred metres before heading off rightwards towards the southern ridge of Coniston Old Man. The cloud intermittently cleared briefly to reveal glimpses of the blue sky above and the cloud free Eastern Fells - clearly we should have gone walking there!  Heading on up the south ridge, into the cold wind, we were soon walking on snow, most of which was pretty soft. At around 12:30pm we reached the summit cairn on The Old Man of Coniston (Nuttall, Marilyn, Wainwright, Birkett), together with the nearby trigpoint.

Snowy, misty summit of The Old Man of Coniston

We stopped in the lee of the cairn for lunch, before descending the north ridge. Around five minutes after we left the summit the cloud briefly cleared to allow us a glimpse back up the ridge to the summit.

A brief break in the clouds on the north ridge of Coniston Old Man

Heading towards Levers Hawse

Heading onwards across the soft, slushy snow we soon reached the large cairn on the summit of Brim Fell (Nuttall, Wainwright, Birkett). After descending to Levers Hawse, from where we briefly saw Levers Water, we began to traverse the steep slopes of Swirl How. The snow here was noticeably firmer in places so my ice axe was removed from my bag and placed in the somewhat more useful location of my right hand!

After a little over a kilometre of traversing we reached the col to the west of Great Carrs and then an eighty metre ascent brought us to the two cairns on the summit of Grey Friar (Nuttall, Wainwright, Birkett).

Remains of Halifax Bomber, which crashed here on 22/10/44

After resting for a few minutes we retraced our steps back down to the col, before ascending up towards Great Carrs. Soon we stumbled upon some of the remains of a Halifax Bomber, which crashed here in 1944, together with a memorial cairn. The sun was now starting to break through the clouds and after a little bit more ascent we reached the ridgeline. Here we were in for a treat as the combination on sunshine and cloud on the east side of the ridge resulted in a Brocken spectre!

Brocken spectre between Great Carrs and Swirl How

It was lucky that I had my camera on my chest strap as within a minute of taking this photo the sun went back behind a cloud and the Brocken spectre disappeared! I think this was only the second time I'd seen such a phenomenon. There were also good views along the ridge in both directions!

Swirl How

We briefly detoured to the north to visit the summit of Great Carrs (Nuttall, Wainwright, Birkett) before heading on to the summit cairn of Swirl How (Nuttall, HuMP, Wainwright, Birkett), which was half covered in hoar frost. By now the cloud had returned and a little bit of navigation was required to locate the small summit of Great How Crags (Birkett), which was a new peak for me.

Finally the cloud lifts as we head back towards Coniston Old Man

As we followed the ridge southwards, the cloud began to clear again so we decided to head back up The Old Man of Coniston in the hope of getting a good view of sunset over Dow Crag.  There were excellent views down to Levers Water and Seathwaite Tarn as we continued to follow the ridge, as shown in the following few photos:

Levers Water with Coniston Water in the distance

Seathwaite Tarn

Old Man of Coniston

Summit of the Old Man of Coniston

We reached the summit again at around 4:20pm, with significantly better views than when we were there four hours previously!  Unfortunately a further bank of cloud was heading in from the west, which didn't look like it was likely to clear before sunset.  Therefore we headed back down the south ridge, with good views over to the snow covered Eastern Fells.  We reached the car park at 5:30pm after another good days hill walking; and it was good to meet more new people :-)

More photos from the day can be found here and also here's a link to my Social Hiking map from the walk, complete with tweets and photos from the day.

N.B. 02/06/13 - Post date updated to actual date of walk, i.e. 15/02/13 (from 20/02/13) 

SLMM 2012 - Day 2: The Return to Wasdale Head

Sunday 8th July 2012  

Distance: 17.2km; Ascent:790m; Mainly dry and overcast; with Mark

See approximate route in new window (checkpoints are shown as waypoints)

I woke at around 6:30ish due to the number of overly keen people already up and about, and was pleased to discover that it was dry outside :)  However the disadvantage of camping with so many other people was the seemingly endless queue for the portaloos in the morning!

As we hadn't finished within 45 minutes of the class leaders yesterday we would be taking part in the mass start between 8am and 8:30am (the fastest few teams in each class set off even earlier!), which meant that we didn't have to rush too much and had time for a brew :)  I wandered down to the start to pick up our list of controls for today's route and returned to the tent to plot them out on the maps at our leisure as today's clock had not yet started ticking!  I was slightly disappointed to discover that we wouldn't be returning over the hills on the south side of Wastwater, although the controls we had been given did look to form a reasonable route.

The Sunday mass-start

The organisers seemed very keen to continuously remind everyone who hadn't yet set off that the start closed in x minutes time, where x started at 15 minutes and gradually reduced as you might expect!  By the time we had finished packing up, x had reduced to 9 minutes and we were walking down the field to the start.

We officially started soon after 8:20am and headed for our first control of the day around a kilometre away to the south-east.  Whilst planning our route in the tent earlier we had decided not to follow the circuitous route of the forest tracks but instead to cut across country alongside the northern edge of the woods before following the river down to the bridge and our check point.  This also appeared to the be the approach of the vast majority of the other teams and to start with it all went well, if a little damp underfoot.

However the River Bleng proved to be about knee deep and most of the fell runners just waded it using the fence as a handrail.  But we decided that we didn't fancy getting our boots wet this early on in the day if we could help it and opted for a boulder hop across.  Mark went first but disaster struck around half way across when a suspicious looking rock turned out to be very slippery and there was a dramatic splash as Mark fell into the river!  However no harm was done and he was soon on the other side, if a little wet!  In the light of this I decided to modify my planned crossing slightly and accepted getting damp feet so that I could place them a bit more securely and successfully made it to the other side without falling in :)

Now all we had to do was follow the true left bank of the river downstream for around 200 metres to the bridge, but the route turned out to be an extremely damp peat bog that was over knee deep in places - lovely!  Check point visited we returned back the same way to the forest edge, which we followed SSE and soon picked up a forest track that made for easier, and drier, walking!

On the forest track near check-point 2

After around a kilometre of the forest track we found our second control of the day at a track junction where we turned left towards the hills.  This track ended after another kilometre leaving us with 150 metres of boggy fire-break to negotiate to reach the forest edge.  Here the ascent began, gentle at first, across damp moorland to reach our next check point by the cairn on Glade How (Birkett).

Ahead lay just under 300 metres of ascent, which would take us to our highest point of the day.  After a quick break on Glade How, we joined the seemingly never-ending stream of walkers heading up into the mist.  At around 10:20am we reached the summit of Seatallan (Nuttall, Marilyn, Wainwright, Birkett), where our fourth check point was located.

Descending Seatallan

A number of teams appeared to have resorted to much compass work to find the right way off Seatallan, however the route onwards seemed obvious to us and so we followed our noses and then the path down the north ridge of Seatallan and soon dropped out of the cloud.  Our next check-point was on the SE slopes of Haycock so we followed the clear path northwards across the pass and skirted a boggy area to the west before forking off right on a traverse to find the correct stream.

Upon reaching the stream the check point was nowhere to be seen.  After consulting our altimeters it became clear that we were a little too high and so followed the steam down for a short distance to find the control.  However a number of other teams just continued traversing the hillside; presumably they had decided that it was the wrong stream!

A short steep descent brought us to check point 6 at a sheepfold in the valley bottom, which was followed by a boggy traverse and short descent to reach a stream confluence where check point 7 was located.  The section between here and check point 10 covered some pretty horrible terrain with loose rocks covered in wet bracken, which hence made for some pretty slow progress.  However our poles were a godsend on this terrain and we overtook several other teams clad in fell shoes.

Wast Water

There were good views down the valley to Wast Water as we traversed the unpleasant hillside above Nether Beck to reach a wall; perhaps it would have been easier to follow the valley floor and then walk up next to the wall?  (and indeed this is what the planner's choice route showed after the event!)  Not to worry, we soon had check point 8 in the bag and descended down to cross Over Beck at a handy footbridge.

Over Beck

From here we had two uncrossable boundaries to deal with that we were officially only allowed to cross at the crossing points marked on the special SLMM map.  Therefore we had two options: either a steep ascent to reach a higher crossing point or a traverse to reach a lower crossing point (both options also involved further traversing to cross the second wall at its only crossing point).  We chose the second option, along with many other teams, and were somewhat disappointed to find that the crossing point didn't actually exist!  We were certain we were in the correct location, but there was no stile that we concluded that there would be at the official crossing point.

We could see a reasonable distance downhill and concluded that it wasn't there.  Uphill however we could spot the higher of the two crossing points marked on the map and opted to head for that one instead.  First wall out of the way, we descended to cross the second wall before traversing to reach a well concealed control at the base of a small crag.

On the home straight back to Wasdale Head

A slippery descent brought us to a faint path alongside a wall, which we followed north-eastwards for around a kilometre to reach our first manned check point of the route, which was also our last one.  Red and white tape now showed us the way to the finish, a little over 500m distant.  We ran the last couple of hundred metres, arriving at the finish by way of a little bridge over Mosedale Beck shortly after 1pm.

Day 2 times

The food tent beckoned and we joined the snaking queue, which went all the way around the inside of the large marquee!  Lunch consisted of some sort of multiple bean stew with pitta bread, followed by flapjack; all very welcome after two days on the hill, especially as I'm not really used to walking against the clock!  By now the results had been displayed on the tent wall and we discovered that overall we had finished 50th out of 101 finishers in our class with a time of 10 hours and 19 minutes, which we thought was pretty good considering our extremely limited amount of running over the two days :)

Our certificate :)

After lunch we wandered around saying our goodbyes to various people before heading back to Stockport, via Liverpool, for a roast dinner / curry with Gordon, Lucy, Mark and Lynsey.  All in all it had been an excellent weekend, especially as I didn't get anywhere near as wet as I might have expected from the forecast!

N.B. 30/10/12 - Post date updated to actual date of walk, i.e. 08/07/12, (from 16/07/12)

SLMM 2012 - Day 1: Wasdale Head to the Midway Camp

Saturday 7th July 2012

Distance: 18km; Ascent:1130m; Sunny; with Mark

See approximate route in new window (checkpoints are shown as waypoints)

The luck of the draw had resulted in us having a relatively early start time of 8:58am this morning for our first ever mountain marathon.  We had entered the Wansfell class, which was pretty much the easiest class on which you were allowed to run if we wished.  After breakfast we struck camp and registered ourselves on the event, at which point Mark was given an SI card to attach to his wrist that would record our visits to each of the check points.

Setting off from Wasdale Head on Saturday morning

It was bright and sunny as we set off from the event centre at Wasdale Head at 8:30am for the "20 minute walk" to the start up in Mosesale as part of a steady stream of entrants, most of whom looked to be fell runners.  After 15 minutes or so, we got our first sighting of the start and it still looked to be quite some distance away!  Therefore we quickened our pace and made it to the start with 2 minutes to spare.

At our allotted time we passed through the start gate and picked up our list of check points for the day; this was also when we found out where we would be camping for the first time.  The clock was now ticking and so we could either opt to go directly to our first check point or spend a few minutes annotating our SLMM Harvey Map of the area with our check points for the day.  We opted for the later as it would save time later, and this appeared to be the approach of most of the teams who were busily scribbling on their maps in the sunshine.

Heading for the first check-point

Yewbarrow towering above Mosedale

The first check point wasn't too far away: a re-entrant on the way up Black Sail Pass and we were there around 30 minutes after starting.  There were good views from here back to the start in Mosedale.  We picked up the main path up to Black Sail Pass, but soon forked off right on a much fainter path that looked to take a more direct line up to our next control.  After much ascent we finally reached the summit of Looking Stead (Nuttall, Birkett) and found our 2nd control on it's north side. 
 

On Looking Stead heading for the 2nd check-point

The check-point on Looking Stead

The views from up here were excellent with good views across to many of the surrounding groups of hills, including those on the north side of Ennerdale.

High Stile and High Crag above Ennerdale

We headed west up the main ridge with the intention of contouring round to Wind Gap at some point.  However the ground looked quite rocky and we eventually decided that it would probably be quicker to go up and over Pillar.  We soon reached the trig point on the summit of Pillar (Nuttall, Marilyn, Wainwright, Birkett), where we had a quick break whilst admiring the views.

Summit of Pillar

The SW slopes of Pillar were mainly easy and grassy and we decided that as we were in a running class, we might as well do a spot of running!  The strange thing was that we seemed to be some of the only people running, and it seemed a little odd to be jogging past teams kitted out in fell running shoes!  However the running was short lived as the ground soon steepened and we were scrambling down the rocks to reach check point 3 in Wind Gap.

From here the only way was up and we ascended up the steep slopes to soon reach the summit cairn of Black Crag (Nuttall, Birkett).  After descending slightly to a pass we picked up a traversing path towards Red Pike, which we followed for a few hundred metres before cutting across country to the stream bend high on Scoat Fell, which formed our 4th check point.

We jogged down the gentle, but wet, slopes to reach Scoat Tarn where the crossing of the outflow seemed to be causing problems for some who were trying to keep their feet dry!  However we had no problems, as we used our poles for assistance, and soon reached our 5th checkpoint on the south side of the tarn.  From here it was a reasonable distance to our next one, with an intervening valley in the way!

After descending down into the head of the Nether Beck valley, we picked a traversing line up through the small crags to reach the boggy area of the Pots of Ashness below the north side of Seatallan.

Mark pointing to check-point 6 in the Pots of Ashness

Our 6th control was described as by a tarn, which as you can see above was not entirely obvious!  However the steady stream of people heading to a particular point in the boggy hollow strongly suggested that that was where the control point was!  And therefore we headed for it!

After crossing the pass to the west we began to descend towards the valley of the River Bleng.  Soon we found a few rocks to sit on and enjoy a 10 minute lunch stop, much to the amusement of passing competitors!  The descent proved to be quite steep through rocky and ferny ground; I was very glad of my poles!

The check point was not obvious from the descent as it was slightly hidden by a small hummock down by Tounge Gill - very devious!  Although we didn't really have any trouble locating it and were soon traversing the hillside to reach check point 8 by the waterfall on Red Beck.  From here we picked up a faint sheep path that traversed the hillside to reach the cairn on Hause, from where we could pick out the overnight camp in the distance.

Cairn on Hause prior to the boggy tussocks

The ground from here on was unpleasant consisting almost entirely of boggy tussocks!  This made for relatively slow going!  However eventually we reached our final control of the day, just on the edge of the forest at a track junction.  Now all we had to do was finish and there was a good track - even better!  We ran the last few hundred metres to the finish point and after checking in we were given the following printout of our times:

Day 1 times

It was now only 2:30pm and it was a little strange to be finished for the day so early!  But it was sunny :)  We set up camp in the increasingly busy field and set about having a relaxing afternoon :)  Given our relatively early start this morning, most of the people we knew were yet to arrive.  Gradually however they began to appear until by late afternoon we had quite a sizeable group consisting of Mark, me, Gordon, Lucy, Ian, Janet, Rich, Ben, Robin, Shayda and Jon.

The sunny mid-way camp

We picked up our beer, milk and soft drink order and sat around having dinner in the sun.  However the weather finally changed at around 7:30pm - it started raining!  And so we all retreated to our tent for an hour or two.  Eventually it stopped and we were back outside socialising.  I took a wander down to the results boards displayed at the finish to see how well we did today: we finished in a time of 05:29:14, which meant that we were 46th out of 109 finishers, which we were pretty pleased with!

N.B. 30/10/12 - Post date updated to actual date of walk, i.e. 07/07/12, (from 13/07/12)

The Deepdale Horseshoe

Distance: 15.5km; Ascent: 1140m; Occasional sunshine, cold & windy; Solo

See route in new window

It had been several months since I was last in the Lake District, so I decided it was time for my first trip there this year.  I had been thinking about walking the Deepdale Horseshoe for a while and so shortly after 9:30am I set off walking from Patterdale in the warm sunshine.  I ascended up past Oxford Crag to reach my first summit of the day: Arnison Crag (Wainwright, Birkett), with excellent views back down to Ullswater.

Summit cairn of Arnison Crag

I followed a narrow path across the undulating ground to the SW to reach Trough Head, from where I began my ascent of Birks.  By now it was quite cold and windy, so I stopped part-way up to don an extra layer and my leggings.  Shortly after 11am I reached the summit of Birks (Nuttall, Wainwright, Birkett), which was marked by a small cairn and an intriguing small lump mounted on one of the rocks by the cairn; apparently this is to do with the OS and it is a type of trigpoint.

OS bolt on Birks

I followed the flattish ground to the SW before beginning my ascent of St Sunday Crag.  At the obvious path junction, I forked round to the left to reach the subsidiary summit of Gavel Pike (Birkett) from where there were excellent views into Deepdale and across to Hart Crag and Fairfield.

Hart Crag and Fairfield above upper Deepdale

By now I was ready for lunch, so I found a nice sheltered spot between Gavel Pike and St Sunday Crag, just off the ridge but with excellent views into Deepdale.  After lunch, I crossed a few small snow patches and soon reached the summit of St Sunday Crag (Marilyn, Nuttall, Wainwright, Birkett).

St Sunday Crag from the SW

I descended down the easy ridge, with occasional jogging, to reach Deepdale Hause.  I took a direct line up the north ridge of Fairfield, with occasional scrambling, to reach the small subsidiary summit of Cofa Pike (Birkett).  Again there were excellent views down to Grisedale Tarn and across to many of the surrounding hills, including the Helvellyn range to the north.

Seat Sandal and Grisedale Tarn

Dollywaggon Pike, Nethermost Pike and Helvellyn from N ridge of Fairfield

It was strangely sheltered from the wind as I continued up the north ridge of Fairfield (Marilyn, Nuttall, Wainwright, Birkett) to reach the summit, where the wind reappeared with a vengeance!  The summit was busy, so I only lingered long enough to admire the views before heading onto Hart Crag, where I found a nice sunny spot out of the wind to rest with views towards Windermere.

Summit of Hart Crag

From the summit cairn of Hart Crag (Nuttall, Wainwright, Birkett), I descended to the north west towards the ridge of Hartsop above How.  On several previous occasions, I had looked down to the ridge from here and concluded that it looked like a nice way up or down the hill so I was quite excited to actually be about to walk it!

Looking down the ridge of Hartsop above How from Hart Crag

From the top of the ridge there were excellent views along the ridge and beyond to the hills to the north of High Street.  The first section of the ridge was quite steep and I choose a direct line down the rocky sections with some easy sections of scrambling to descend. Once the rocky section was over, I jogged down some of the easy grassy ridge as I needed to get some practise in for the Saunders later this year!

On summit of Hartsop above How

Soon I reached the little rocky outcrop that marked the summit of Hartsop above How (Wainwright, Birkett).  I was now out of the wind again and it was beginning to feel quite warm, so gloves and hat were no longer necessary!  I continued down the pleasant ridge to reach the little summit of Gale Crag (Birkett), before continuing down, with occasional jogging, to reach the woods of Deepdale Park where the trees were pleasantly green with new leaves.

New leaves on the trees in Deepdale Park

After passing through the woods and crossing a field, I met the A592.  I followed the road northwards back towards Patterdale, with the pavement crossing between sides of the road every few hundred metres.  I passed the youth hostel, where I stayed on my very first hill walking trip to the Lake District some 12.5 years ago, and soon reach the post office where I bought some very nice caramel shortbread.  I got back to the car at approx 3:30pm after an excellent 6 hours of Lakeland walking just as a shower started, which was good timing!

More photos from today's walk