Wasdale, Lake District - Scafell Pike
We’ve been hoping to complete the national three peaks this year, after our ascent of Ben Nevis in September and quick dash up Snowdon in October. Yes, I know some people do it in under 24 hours but we don’t like to rush. Our mutual weekends off and available for mountain climbing have not coincided with the good weather so far, so we’d decided to just go for it “come hell or high water” this weekend.
Well the high water was sadly far more accurate than we would ever have expected, with the Lake District being hit with terrible flooding last week. But the worst hit was the eastern side, with the road through to Wasdale Head in the West cleared and passable by the weekend.
We travelled up on the Friday evening after my post Christmas do hangover had subsided, I’d had my hair cut and we’d faffed around packing for ages. We stayed the night in a favourite camper van overnight stop about 45 minutes from Wasdale Head, and found that we were surprisingly warm overnight and didn’t need Claire’s bagpuss hot water bottle.
We were up at 5.15am (!) on the Saturday in order to drive to Wasdale, use the toilets, get kitted up, and be on our way up the hill at sunrise, which I had arbitrarily calculated as being 7am. Fortunately my calculations were wrong, as we did not run to schedule. It was still night time at 7am but by the time we were ready to go at about 7.45am, dawn had broken and we could clearly see the rain, which was not supposed to be falling until lunchtime - the whole reason for the ridiculously early start.
It was very mild in the valley so we weren’t wearing loads of layers under our waterproofs, they were all in our rucksacks with our sandwiches, pork pies, sausage rolls and mince pies. We’d packed ice axes and crampons, but were certain they wouldn’t be required as it was about 15 degrees, so left them in the van.
We took the tourist route up - the shortest and easiest, from the National Trust car park near Wasdale Head. It was pretty easy going with a well made path, which was a relief because it would have been very muddy without. Much to our surprise, the steady rain started turning to sleet at about 350 metres and snow a short while later. This really should not have been a surprise to us, as it was exactly what the mountain weather forecasters had predicted, it was just a few hours early.
After a while it started to get a quite slippy underfoot because it was proper snowy, so we had to slow down a bit. We put another layer on and had a sausage roll and carried on. Before long, the snow was impeding walking significantly, with one foot sliding out in a random three dimensional direction from under us on about every fourth step. By the time we got near to the junction with the incoming “corridor route”, the snow was drifting above knee height in some places. The snow was too soft for crampons but we wished our ice axes were with us instead of in the van as we’d both had a couple of slippy-slidey moments. We were just bordering on being cold, but so long as we kept moving we were okay. We had to stop again to get our face coverings out. No, we hadn’t converted to Islam, but the wind had picked up and was blowing the new snow around in a manner that I can only describe as how I imagine being sandblasted by mini icicles would be. One we’d got our trusty buffs pulled up to our eyes, things improved slightly. However, our eyes were still being blasted by the icicles, and because our faces were covered we couldn’t eat any of the other food we’d got, which was a shame because I was starving.
The last 300 vertical metres or so were directly into the wind, which was making things extremely difficult as we couldn’t see. Not being able to see is bad enough, but when you’re trying to plant each foot onto a nice flat stable rock rather than a snowdrift on top of nothing, it becomes a real problem. So much so that we reluctantly decided to turn back with less than half a kilometre in total and about 200 vertical metres to go. Hiking and mountaineering is one of the few sports where there is no shame in turning back. in fact, is positively encouraged if it’s likely to avoid a mountain rescue callout or similarly embarrassing and costly situation. Claire even managed to do a quick video to show how bad it was.
So we set off back down, slightly grumpy, but relieved at being facing away from the evil icicles. We huddled under our survival shelter for 10 minutes to eat our sandwiches and have some coffee and then set off back down. We got back to the van for about 11.30am, dumped all our wet kit into bin bags and had the rest of the coffee, along with the mince pies. The only plus side was that I made some custard to go with them.
In hindsight, it was probably not the best day to try and ascend England’s highest peak. But we have learnt a few things for our next winter adventure:
- Keep food in pockets and not rucksacks for easy access.
- Have face coverings fairly handy and not in the bottom of the rucksack.
- Bring ice axes (definitely) and crampons (probably) even if you think you probably wont need them.
- Carry ski goggles. This would have made the difference between us getting to the summit or not on this trip.
- Wear merino wool rather than synthetic base layer to avoid smelling like a wet dog.
- Get a better wet kit holder for the van as bin bags rip and leak.
- Take the normal camera as it’s impossible to operate an iPhone with mountaineering gloves on.
- Consider doing something else if it’s raining in the valley in December. e.g. sitting by the fire in the Wasdale Head Inn.
