Skiddaw, Little Man and Latrigg

[gld73]

Arrived at my parents late the night before by train, so didn't want to disappear off early on a walk. Weather wasn't great, so rather than waste time looking for good routes up new hills, I headed for Skiddaw, a big mountain but one with a good path to avoid navigation problems in the clag, and easy for me to drive to (i.e. not wanting to drive all round the county in my mum's car). I did it from Keswick about 20 years ago, but the late start and short daylight hours meant this time I started from the small (but free) parking area at Under Skiddaw, behind Latrigg.

Good, clear stony path all the way up, which was just as well as I was soon in the clag and navigation would have been as rubbish as the views. Put a couple of extra layers on once I was at the summit plateau, felt very cold, still snow patches around. Headed over to the trig point and summit, then headed back the same route as far as the path branching off to the right to return over Little Man, Lesser Man and then back down rejoining the main path back down to the car. A surprisingly easy walk given it's munro equivalence, so rather than head directly back to the car, I popped up Latrigg too, which just added a few extra minutes and metres of ascent to things (though not much, given the high start point) and gave me a view over Keswick and Derwentwater.

Obvious path to follow up Skiddaw even if the cloud is down

My ascent route took the path contouring around Little Man, though a lot of the path was covered by snow. Still easy enough to follow fortunately given the rubbish visibility.

Skiddaw summit. I didn't hang around.

Little Man summit

View south down to Derwentwater and Keswick from Latrigg

Heading back down Latrigg to the car park, cloud now even lower on Skiddaw