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Sometimes while climbing you look at another hill and think "one day I'd like to climb that". I can't say I've ever felt this way about High Tove. I've been doing quite a bit of walking on the other Borrowdale fells lately and often found myself looking at High Tove and wondering what on earth Wainwright was thinking about. Why have a seperate chapter on this? Was he having a laugh at other walker's expense? Was it a case of 'salami publishing' in which authors try to get as many publications as possible out of one subject? Either way, despite being one of the worst hills in the Lakes, I was quite looking forward to High Tove and its infamous bogs:
Before tackling High Tove, I climbed the two Mell Fells and Gowbarrow, starting at Aira Force and finishing at the Troutbeck Inn:
Little Mell Fell was pretty dull:
The descent was an ordeal though. Somehow I ended up in a large area of gorse bushes. I thought I'd found a path but it led me deeper and deeper into the gorse, and soon I was crawling through tunnels of the stuff, getting scratched all over
Great Mell Fell was just wierd. There's something really odd about the way it has a sparse cover of pine trees near the summit. The atmosphere as I approached the top, passing a group of horses, felt surreal.
The direct descent from Great Mell Fell was very steep and wouldn't have been much fun in the snow without an ice axe.
I stayed in Keswick and got up early the next day. A proper alpine start was needed if I had any chance of climbing the mighty High Tove. Actually, this was a sensible idea as it was very cold and the boggy ground was partially frozen. This would make the 'Pewits' easier, but I needed to get a move on before the sun started to melt the ice.
And so it started. Down in the Pewits.
The bog was partially frozen. Not enough to walk across normally, but enough to make progress a little easier.
More bogs... I should get the Piolet d'Or for this
Mostly it wasn't so bad, but near the end there was a large marshy section that took a large detour to cross.
The 'Eddy Grave Stake' wasn't much but did mark the end of the worst of the bogs.
Looking over to the other silly Wainwright in the area, Armboth Fell:
The traverse between Tove and Armboth was a little boggy but nothing compared to the Pewits.
From here I made a beeline for Raven Crag. There is a track and right of way marked on the map, although little was evident. Once on the forest road it was easy going until the rather OTT steps and boardwalk leading to the summit of Raven Crag.
Up until now, everything had been straightforward and gone as planned. Unfortunately my preferred path down from Raven Crag was closed, forcing me to use the forest road instead. After walking along this a short distance I found this too was closed due to felling work. I followed the diversion for a while, going along a track not marked on the map and seemingly going in the opposite direction to that intended. After a while I lost patience and decided to cut through the trees (it was fairly thinly planted). This started off OK but soon I was climbing over a mass of felled tree branches and getting increasingly annoyed at my choice of route. Eventually I got out and made it onto the small path leading Northwards. Soon I was going off-piste yet again, trying to get across to the road, when it looked like the path was going to take me too far North.
It looked like I was finally able to get going on High Rigg, but within yards I was faced with
yet another path closure. This time I'd completely had enough. The closure was due to drilling work for the pipeline and there didn't seem to be anything actually happening so I carried on up the path, ignoring the warnings.
I saw the route going over a stile and off to the right. After crossing the stile I found a dead shrew, frozen solid in the cold weather. I'd managed to climb most of the way to the 'summit' before I happened to turn around and realised there was a much higher summit in the complete opposite direction. After descending back to the stile, past the frozen shrew, I found a remarkably obvious path leading in the correct direction. How did I miss it? Anyway, after a short walk I was on the summit of the final Wainwright of the day (9 for the whole trip), meeting the first people all day. From there, I walked to Threlkeld to catch the bus home. Job done