Weather Behaving Badly

Tuesday 21st January 2014
Lake District
I finally dragged myself out of bed at 7.45am this morning, after turning both alarm clocks off at 7.20 and thinking about getting up for what I thought was a couple of minutes. I kicked Claire out of the van at 8am with her camera, whilst I stayed inside and packed the bed up and mopped all the condensation off the windows (no small task in winter!). I don’t think it rained overnight, but even so, I didn’t sleep all that well. It took me ages to get warm, and it always takes me a night or two to get used to sleeping in George.

Claire got some good photos, then we had bagels for breakfast and set off for the Langdale Pikes. We called into the gingerbread shop on the way (good job we did as things turned out), and then drove George down a very steep, narrow, winding lane to Great Langdale. We were pleased to find that the car park was run by the National Trust so we could park for free with our car sticker. The car park was practically empty, a rarity in the Lakes, and I wondered if all the other visitors knew something we didn’t.
We set off on our walk just after 11am. The way up was via a relentless steep path alongside a river, in which some poor school children were being made to do canyoneering. Canyoneering is something which looks like good fun in, say, The Narrows in Zion National Park in summer. Not in ice cold Lake District rivers in January. We walked swiftly on as it was making us cold just looking at them.
At the top of the relentless path was a nice little lake called Stickle Tarn. It was too cold to stop and have a nice break there as was suggested on the route card, and the best we could manage was a five minute huddle in a slightly sheltered spot while we ate our chocolate cornflake cakes. We continued round the tarn and upwards to the summit of our first tick on the list for the day; Pavey Ark. About 5 minutes before we reached the top, the clouds came down, and unfortunately didn't lift for the remainder of the day. Not to be deterred by a bit of cloud, we continued on to bag the summit of Thunacar Knot, which was a bit tricky as we struggled to see where it was for the clouds. Then we continued onto summit number 3; Harrison Stickle. About 5 minutes before we got to the top, it started snowing. Claire was excited for a few minutes until it got more persistent and we were having to walk into it when it was blowing horizontally into our eyes.
We had a lunch break in our survival shelter, which is like a cross between a bivvy bag and a tent without poles, and folds up into a bag the size of a grapefruit. It kept us warm enough to eat our Lancashire pasties and Bakewell tarts mid blizzard, but we were soon on our way again, wondering what the weather was going to throw at us next.

Onwards to summit 4; Pike O’ Stickle, which was the only peak today that is also on our Trail 100 list. Had it not been both on the way back, and on both lists, we would have skipped it, as shortly after emerging from the survival shelter, the snow turned to driving rain, verging on sleet. We switched to waterproof jackets, but there was no stopping the rain gradually working its way in round the hoods.
Finally summit 5; Loft Crag, which was part of the route down. We thought we were nearly back until we saw through a break in the clouds that the valley floor looked miles away, and we had a long steep descent ahead of us.
We finally got back to George at 4.30pm, and by the time we’d got out of all our wet clothing, and tried to wrap everything up in bin liners to stop George getting flooded, it was too late to go back to Grasmere for a cup of tea or a browse round the shops.
We went straight home, and after we’d hung all our wet kit up to dry I spent a gleeful few minutes ticking hills off lists. Of the Wainwright’s, we have ticked off 15 to date leaving a measly 199 to do, and on the Trail 100 list we have now ticked off 12 leaving only 88! I suspect we will still finish the Wainwright’s long before though.

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