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I had been up Kinder Scout before: last summer, on a terrific route seeing some of the highlights of the plateau – up Grindsbrook Clough, navigating a group across the moor to the Downfall (I felt so proud of that! But rather lost my reputation when somehow going 180deg wrong off a misty Scafell Pike a few weeks later…), past Kinder Low and down Jacob’s Ladder. Great stuff. And I thought I’d ‘climbed the mountain’.
But then I became rather more of a ‘bagger’, I learnt that I hadn’t actually been within 500m of the actual summit, and it started to gnaw away at me… So this was an evening return to my ‘local mountain’ to rectify that… But there’s so much of the Kinder plateau to see that it seems you can walk up and around four or five times and barely tread the same ground again; this way visited the highest point from the southern edges.
The first stretch of the Pennine Way west from Edale must be among the most-trodden routes around, but it’s still very pleasant going – gently upwards through the broad valley on an easy flagged path.
- Kinder plateau from Edale
- Hartshorn & Ringing Roger
- Mam Tor & Rushup Edge
- Pennine Way near Broadlee Bank Tor
- Crowden Clough
- Back down Noe valley towards Mam Tor
From the bridge at the foot of Jacob’s Ladder, there’s a faintly-pathed route steeply upwards through the cloughs to the plateau. It’s attractive – lushly vegetated and enlivened by little rocky falls - and very quiet, but still pretty tough going, especially lower down where you need to clamber up and around the quite vertiginous green banks as the clough narrows. Further up, as the stream gets shallower, you can head up its bed and the upper slopes are a good scramble over huge sandy boulders, much like a rougher, wilder version of the Grindsbrook ascent.
- Looking up ascent clough to Noe Stool
- Youngate Bridge
- Falls in the narrowing clough
- Towards Crowden Tower during ascent
You come out of the grough onto the vast peaty Kinder plateau in a position where you can look over a sweep of the landmarks of the southern edge, from Kinder Low across to Crowden Tower and, just faintly in the distance to the north-east, the little pole marking the imperceptible summit rise. Zigzag through the hags and (dryish) peaty hollows and you’re soon there – in the sunshine there’s something beautiful about the broad flat views all around; in other conditions you can imagine why few might reach this point! And perhaps they won’t have to forever – the elevation of the cairn in the peat shows how much the ground around is eroding; I guess it won’t be long before somewhere else becomes the ‘summit’…
- Looking towards the rocks on the southern edge of the Kinder plateau
- Approaching the summit of Kinder Scout through the peat
- North across the Kinder plateau
- View south from Kinder Scout summit to the Woolpacks
After cutting back south through the sandy groughs, the edge path leads through the head of Crowden Clough and around to the more obvious peak of Grindslow Knoll. This is a nice little hill, with really good views down to the classic ascent up Grindsbrook Clough and the eastern spur of the plateau.
- Rushup Edge over Crowden Clough
- Grindslow Knoll from the edge path
- Head of Grindsbrook Clough
- Rock sculpture marking path to Grindslow Knoll
- Hartshorn over Grindsbrook Clough
- Grindslow Knoll
Quite a steep and eroded path descends east back to the start of the Pennine Way and back down through Edale. This was a quieter and shorter route to Kinder; perhaps not the very best, but with enough views and ideas to tempt you back to try something else again.
- Mam Tor over Edale
- Hartshorn & Ringing Roger
- Kinder eastern edges from near Edale