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Perfect, cool and clear, walking day to take on England’s highest peaks.
The climb straight up Lingmell’s west ridge is a pretty fierce start to any walk: relentlessly steep for the first mile from the Brackenclose carpark. The part that looks most daunting as you climb though, a patch of very steep-looking scree, is actually the herald of easier going – a decent zigzag/steps path for a few minutes and then an easy damp grass ridge the rest of the way up. Wast Water and the craggy faces of Scafell Pike and (especially) Scafell are in tempting view most of the way and, if a little breathlessly, it isn’t too long before you reach the summit.
- Pillar & Mosedale
- Scafell Pike & Scafell
- Wast Water down Lingmell's west ridge
- Scafell
- Broad Crag & Piers Gill from Lingmell
- Sty Head & (hazily) Borrowdale
A short descent leads to the main Wasdale-Scafell Pike path - not too busy midweek and a little outside peak season, and quite easy going on the clear boot-whitened route up. This had seemed hellish a few years before (admittedly early on a terribly wet and foggy morning when no other fools were there at all…), but it’s perhaps been repathed since then (or we’d totally missed the easy way both up and down…) – hard now not to find this an easy non-stop way up. Plenty of others doubtless feel the same, and the summit is a busy, very noisy place to pass quickly by onto the quiet path down to Mickledore, and a daunting view of the face of Scafell…
- Kirk Fell & Great Gable behind Lingmell
- Scafell Pike from the final ascent
- Scafell over Mickledore
You can see the temptation of the direct ascent (Broad Stand, and ‘not for walkers’ sadly), as it’s a long way down either way before you can start climbing up again and the going south-east – even if for only a couple of hundred yards – is desperately painstaking over very loose scree. After which, the obvious route up the Foxes Tarn gully is terrific - fun and fairly easy, unexposed scrambling beside the tumbling stream and a very good way to regain that lost height - before an easy enough path leads on from the tiny tarn up and over the summit. Three people here in total, which was perhaps a hundred short of the amount on or around Scafell Pike a mile away… Four years on from reaching my first Lakes summit on a hellish day at the highest point, this - in happier conditions on the next highest - was my final Lakes Hewitt. And – added to those of Wales, Yorkshire and the south – perhaps the last of those I’d really targeted climbing (the 32 tops in the rolling far-northern bogs might just follow eventually, but if the first experiences aren’t too good, they might never…). Whichever, this was a fine and fitting ‘end’-point.
- Ascending the Foxes Tarn gully...
- ...and looking back down
- Down to Foxes Tarn
- Bowfell & Crinkle Crags from Scafell
- Scafell Pike & Ill Crag
After a long stretch over bare rock and stone, the going on Scafell’s south ridge is great walking on a grassy path along the crest. Probably a mistake to forsake this to skirt Long Green’s crags to the west (looking back, a clear path seemed to head right along the edge), but still an easy walk to the little crest of Slight Side above Eskdale.
- Long Green & Eskdale
- Scafell from near Slight Side
- Esk Pike & upper Eskdale
- Coniston Fells from Slight Side
Judging by the few other walkers seen in this area, most ascend Scafell from Eskdale, and there didn’t seem a great deal of evidence on the ground that anyone had ever dropped down from Slight Side to Wasdale! It’s an easy enough grassy descent in the first place, but deteriorates into some very marshy terrain further down and either side of, much the highlight, finding a crossing of the plummeting waters of Hardrigg Gill. It’s a very long and rough mile or two really, but perhaps – in hindsight – still might be rather easier on the legs than a steep and stony ascent to match the ways up to end a really satisfying day.
- Falls above the crossing of Hardrigg Gill
- Burnmoor Tarn from Hardrigg Gill
- Kirk Fell
- Middle Fell over Wast Water
- Lingmell & Scafell Pike
- Illgill Head