Scrambled Legs

With one eye on the weather forecast, Jo managed to swap her bank holiday Monday to the Friday, so off we went on Thursday night to the Lakes. This meant we got the best weather on Friday, and the good forecast (but not the actual weather) on Saturday. Whether or not we were net winners is a matter for debate…

Anyway, we headed to Rosthwaite for a weekend of scrambling and hopefully climbing. Friday dawned cold and clear, and with snow on the tops, we opted for a scramble rather than a climb. Langstrath is an amazing empty valley in the middle of the Lakes, and Cam Crag is a wonderful ridge onto the tops in a good surrounding. After a fun scramble, we headed on up to Glaramara and on again to Esk Pike and Bowfell. I realised I had left my water bottle at our lunch stop, so we headed back over Esk Pike to Allen Crags. Unfortunately, someone had already nicked the water bottle, so we headed back to our route, past Angle Tarn and over Rossett Pike back down into Langstrath. Not entirely surprisingly, Langstrath is quite long. It was nearly 7pm when we finally made it out, pretty knackered and both of us with sore feet, dreaming of gear shops and buying new boots.

We then spent a pleasant evening in a campsite (luxury), although it was still pretty cold to be outside.

The next day started similarly, so we went off to look at Gillercomb Crag on Grey Knotts above Seathwaite. While still walking to the start from the campsite (before 10am) I ran out of energy and required a second breakfast, despite an enormous meal the night before. We wandered up beside Sour Milk Ghyll (we decided it was too cold to go in) , did a short but enjoyable scramble on Seathwaite Upper Slabs, and were checking Gillercombe Crag and our route when it started to rain. Waterproofs on, we decided to abort, and walk around the crag. Getting closer, we decided the rain had eased enough to go for it anyway. We were half way up the obvious route, when a re-reading of the guidebook (“no route finding difficulties”) showed we had taken an alternative route but were luckily back on track. A fun and interesting scramble up an imposing crag and it started to snow as we topped out. A quick stomp in the wind round to Brandreth and Green Gable and we headed down – it just wasn’t worth the mist, wind and rain to head on up to Great Gable, which we have done in similar conditions before.

Another afternoon and night in the campsite in the pouring rain (we saw a few groups give up and leave) and we simply relaxed on Sunday as the rain didn’t let up until we were out of the Lakes driving home around 2pm.