I drove up to the Lakes early on the Saturday morning with the intention of walking the Saturday, camping and then riding on the Sunday. The weather looked like it would be mixed so I knew I'd need to play it by ear, but the day of Saturday at least looked to be good enough for walking.
This would be my second attempt at this route (the first was in March where I was essentially rained and blown off the hill), and I knew that another failed attempt would be pretty bad for my morale and general attitude toward hill walking. It was therefore a bit unfortunate that I felt a bit lethargic and slightly under the weather. However as I headed up toward Great Gable at least this time I could see it and I decided that I just needed to plough on. I decided against taking the climbers route as I didn't want to slow myself down or tire myself out, however I did cut across at the top of the path so as to do a bit of scrambling up to the summit. The views of the Scafell massif and down into Wasdale were magnificent, but as usual I didn't pause for long at the summit of Great Gable and instead started the descent to the col to Kirk Fell.
It was at the bottom of the col that I slipped and slammed my knee against the rock - I think this was at least in part due to my lethargy, i.e. I was dragging my feet a bit. The pain was bad enough that I had to sit down for a few minutes, but in the end I decided that I could carry on. The walk up and over Kirk Fell was surprisingly arduous, particularly as I seemed to lose the path on the descent. I ended up scrambling down some fairly steep sections - not great with my knee. This was at the same time as getting a dramatic, and somewhat intimidating view of the rest of my planned walk - it was all laid out before me and looked very long indeed....
I walked toward pillar and wimped out of descending into the valley in order to scramble back up as I figured that my knee would let me down and that I would end up regretting it later. In hind sight I decided this was a smart move, because while the views from the top of Pillar made it obvious that the scrambling routes up would be exciting, I also think that it would be easy to get into trouble and I was aware that my balance and flexibility was somewhat "off".
I was properly into my stride now though, the crowds around Great Gable had long disappeared,the weather was settled and the walk felt very doable, even with my knee.
Red Pike virtually skipped by, but by the time I reached Yewbarrow the sun was showing signs of tiredness and so was I. I decided to continue on the planned route rather than taking the easy option. The ascent of Yewbarrow showed itself to be cheeky little scramble from the outset. I lost the path at one point, concerning myself that I was scrambling to the wrong point, but was quickly overtaken by a more confident fell runner who quickly disappeared in front of me. The walk over Yewbarrow was actually one of the most enjoyable parts of the day, it was small and spikey, challenging without being deadly, there were options and decisions to be made. It was difficult to detemine how far I could go before descending to the side though - it was obvious that at some point a turn to the right was needed in order to avoid going over the edge of the cliff, but it wasn't clear how far you could go. In the end I realised when I'd gone too far and retraced my steps (not without difficult), but soon realised that the descent to the path was not going to be easy. I had to scramble down and decided that it would be easier without my rucsac, so I threw it down about 7 or 8m, however it rolled down a further 30m, luckily to a point where it was still retrievable!
Eventually I arrived at the path, but it was still reasonably steep and by now my knee was really aching. I was very relieved to make it to the road and then the car.
I checked in at the camp site at the Wasdale Inn (much later and there wouldn't have been room) and treated myself to a steak, couple of local beers and some whisky before checking in for the night, by which time it was raining pretty heavily.
No comments:
Post a Comment