Sunday 15 August 2010

14/08/2010 - Return To Lingmell

Well after last weeks errors, I spent a bit of time refreshing my map reading skills and wanted to get out and test myself again. The weather was looking pretty similar to last week, I was hoping for low cloud and hill fog again.
The route. Approx 15km, 6 hours and 30 mins.
Well my wish came true. I arrived at Seathwaite farm about  9am and as predicted the mountain tops were shrouded in cloud. I would get my navigation test on the tops.

 I went through the farm and set off up the side of Sourmilk Gill.

Here is a rather distorted image of the waterfall, I need to work on putting composite images like this together!

The next photos are taken just above the water fall looking toward Base Brown and Raven Crag.


As I climbed higher into the cloud the visibility dropped to about 100m so here are the views from Base Brown and Green Gable......not.


From Green Gable I descended to Windy Gap and from there to Styhead Tarn. At the tarn the cloud was still low but not as bad as last week, this time I could actually see it.

After a quick lunch stop at the stretcher box, I headed for the corridor route. The cloud had begun to lift and this had revealed a near constant line of people along the route. This was a bit of a shame, on the first part of my walk I had the hills all to myself, ah well good to see people enjoying the hills, I still like it better when i get them all to myself . At least there would be some views!


About halfway along the corridor route the weather really started to improve. Big gaps in the clouds developed and the sun started to poke through. There would be no chance of repeating the navigation errors of last week.

The following pics were taken from the top of Lingmell looking back the way I came and toward Wasdale.




I reversed my route and headed back along to Styhead Tarn and from there dropped down into the valley and back to the farm.

I took this just as I got back on the corridor route.

I think this was one of the best if not most tiring days I have had in the mountains. I'm a happy chappy!

Monday 9 August 2010

08/08/2010 - Scafell Pike and Lingmell............Navigation Fail !

The weather forecast was looking good, broken cloud and sunny spells. However I have learned over the years that the mountains make there own weather and not to entirely trust the forecast. 

The plan was park at Seathwaite farm and get my Dad up Lingmell and Scafell Pike via the corridor route, which he had never done before.

Well low cloud and limited visibility was to be the order of the day. Visibility was down to between 50 and 100 metres this made navigation a lot harder, however I was pretty confident, confident but untested.

Dad and I got up to the corridor route and along it no problems, however I made some basic mistakes and couldn't find the path to Lingmell. I was really disappointed. Well looking back at it now I know where I went wrong and have learned my lesson, just shows I need a lot more practice of navigation in bad weather.


Dad and I just below the summit of Scafell Pike.

Looking back toward Scafell as we descended

Great End is in there somewhere !


This is how the day eneded. As we got to the end of our walk the mist and low cloud cleared, sun and blue skies......typical :P



31/07/2010 - Hartsop

This was just a little training walk to get me back in the swing of things and to pick off one Wainwright that had eluded me.


Hot and sticky in the valleys and cool and windy on the tops of the fells, this made for a sweaty combination. Jacket on ,jacket off, jacket on, jacket off, all the way round. Still a good day and I finished it faster than expected too. Sadly not a great day for pics :(




Here's my progress so far on the Wainwrights, I aim to complete some time next year, fingers crossed ! 

Red = Done :D

Monday 2 August 2010

Just A Few Pics from 03/07/2010

As the last post mentioned just trying to get all of my old material up on this blog and get back up to date. Enjoy the pics ;)


Restarting After The Stall

Well for some reason I stalled ! I dunno how but I lost my lust for mountains. In the last 2 months I have spent little or no time anywhere near mountains. Perhaps it was overload, I have been out pretty much every weekend for the last 3 years. 

I told one of my friends about my predicament and he told me that sometimes you need to step back from the things you enjoy and  take a little time to really evaluate why you do them. Maybe for me mountains had simply become routine.

Well now that I have had my time to reflect I realise that I am happier in the mountains, I really have missed them and getting out there last Saturday really recharged my spiritual batteries and rekindled my enthusiasuim for all things mountainous :D

So here are a few catch up pics that I hadn't posted from 22/05/2010 , the next few posts will bring this blog back up to date !