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Well, here we are at last, Denise and I are now on the same number of Wainwrights and our ambition to complete them on the same mountain on the same day is now becoming a reality.
We had the Travelodge near Cockermouth booked for the weekend hoping to do Red Pike, High Stile and High Crag above Buttermere on Saturday and possibly The Nab on our way home on Sunday
I had saved Red Pike and friends until last hoping we'd be able to take advantage of some nice summer conditions to fully appreciate such a classic ridge walk, one of the finest in the Lakes and give Denise a good day out on her last three "catch ups". As it turned out things were just about perfect.
As usual we were keeping an eye on the weather forecast during the week before our visit and, as usual, it changed from good to not so good as it got closer to the weekend, on Friday it had changed again to "looking pretty good" for Saturday AND Sunday, this was excellent news for our plans, this is how we got on
We were up nice and early Saturday, the sun was making a good effort to come out of hiding, there were some low lying clouds on the fell tops but they looked the sort that would burn off once it got warmer. We had breakfast and then set off for Buttermere.
Driving down the B5289 we saw our intended fells just about cloud free, only a thin wisp on High Stile, we parked in the N.T carpark in Buttermere, got ourselves sorted and were off on our way by 08:10, pretty good for us and the sun was shining
The footbridge over Buttermere outflow was down so we were diverted to Scale Bridge,
this added a wee bit to our route but that was no big deal especially with the decent weather and, with it being fairly early, there wasn't a soul about.
Our route was the climb through Burtness Wood, this is a good path, pitched all the way, its steep but the pitching is well spaced so it didn't feel tiring on the legs, in what seemed no time at all we were clear of the trees and we could see the mountains around us.
By now the clouds were breaking up nicely and we arrived at Bleaberry Tarn Red Pike was just about clear, Chapel Crags were holding on to their bit of cloud but that was getting less and less by the minute.
There were a couple of groups of young wild campers packing up their tents and another group was heading up Red Pike, they looked well organised and had the same gear, probably on their Duke of Edinburgh award scheme.
We had a few minutes rest by the tarn and came to the conclusion that it was probably a nice little spot to wild camp, especially on the long summer evenings, sat outside the tent with a couple of beers, very appealing
We set off for Red Pike, the initial climb from the tarn is on another pitched path at an easy angle, above the saddle it becomes a little more awkward, steep loose scree for about 50m, the views are superb so they take your mind off the effort.
On the summit there's a cairn and a small shelter, by now all the mountains around us were clear of cloud, and the views were superb, it was developing into a nice morning. So, here we were, Denise's last but two catch ups in the bag, we had a snack and headed off for the penultimate one, the weather was perfect now, what a great day to be up here.
The walk over to High Stile is typical Lakeland ridge walking, a bit of everything, steady grass for most of the way, it gets steeper and rougher under foot as you get closer to the summit. The views were fantastic especially looking down to Bleaberry Tarn, there's some pretty impressive gully's on this side of the hill.
There are three large cairns around the summit area, the first one you come to looks like the summit but isn't,
its the next one, N.E ish, that's the summit cairn,
there's another one further over still so we visited that one too.
We had some stunning views, it was a mountain identifiers dream spot, so many fells to see and so many fells we could say we'd been to the top of, this was the sort of day I wanted to have for Denise, just one more catch up now and that's it over there
We had some nibbles and I took a load of photo's, I had a play around with the panorama function on the camera, something I've never used before, I've always taken a series of photo's and stitched them together on the computer, Sony seem to do a good job on their cameras so I'll be using this function a lot more in the future
We set off for High Crag.
From High Stile it looks a fair way away, about a mile or so as the crow flies, the walk over is on really easy terrain so the time taken is not much at all.
We had some nice views on the way,
and saw some climbers on the crags below High Stile, you can just make them out if you look hard enough
We walked to the summit together, Denise's last catch up, it felt good to get to this point, now we're on the same count, just two to go
We met our first person to speak to on the summit and he kindly took a photo of the two of us on our special little summit, the next time we have a "Together Photo" will be on our last Wainwright
High Stile
We set off down Gamlin End planning to have an extended lunch stop near the little tarn at the bottom.
This is a steep descent on a pitched path for a lot of the way, as we were descending we thought that it was a tough old climb from this direction, I was glad we did the route the way we'd come
We had our long lunch break and relaxed in the sunshine, it was great to be out, the weather was just right, there was no need to hurry along.
We set off for the little climb over Seat and then the walk down from Scarth Gap Pass to Buttermere.
When we arrived on the path alongside Buttermere there were a few people out, enjoying the weather, we'd been out for a few hours and had hardly seen anybody on the tops, but, there again, it was a nice afternoon
A lovely place to be
So, that's it, all the catch ups done, just two more Wainwrights to complete, Excellent
