In which I walk up a big hill...
One of the few societies I bothered signing up to when I came to Newcastle University was the fellwalking society. I managed one walk and then persistently found myself otherwise occupied on days when they went walking. However yesterday I found myself free to go on a trip to Patterdale in the Lake District. In February. On the weekend that the British weather finally realised that it was winter and decided to play catch-up.
The way Newcastle University Fellwalking Society works is they hire a coach to drive a bus-load of enthusiastic walkers out to whichever quiet, country village is to be the starting point to the day's walks and then we all split off into groups going on different walks depending on ability. I chose the intermediate of the three walks on offer, aiming for St. Sunday's Crag.
The walk started off easy enough as it entailed getting back on the bus as one of the groups were starting off a bit further up the road than the other two and the coach was still hanging around by the time we got organised. Having gotten off the bus again, the first part of the walk was a pleasant, woodland stroll, with the only difficulty being in finding bits of the path that weren't iced over.
The first ascent was probably also the steepest, but somehow despite this being my first walk in several months and also quite a fast walk due to the distance we intended to cover, I managed to keep pace with the walk leader quite happily. We stopped at a wall running along the hillside part way up to admire the view. Being a fairly grey day one couldn't see very far, but there was still a nice (in a fairly grim, wintery sort of way) view of the valley leading down to a lake (possibly Ullswater - my geography is pretty poor and I didn't get a good look at the map at any point). It looked a little something like this:
I also took a picture of some of the hills on the other side of the valley, but I couldn't tell you what they're called.
The first signs of snow came on the approach to the gate in the aforementioned wall. This snow was thin and well-trodden, so fairly treacherous. Things did not bode well when we passed the gate to find the rest of the ascent blanketed in white and parties ahead of us stopping to equip crampons and unpack their ice axes. Fortunately, as we climbed higher we found the snow was thick and soft enough to yield beneath our boots but dense enough to provide sure footing. The only remote danger was the tendency of the snow to smooth out the landscape, so that what then when you put your foot down you never know whether you're going to sink a couple inches or up past your knee (as indeed happened in one or two places), or conceal frozen trickles of water, which caught out some of the other walkers in our group, but thankfully not myself. More vexing was the constant gale blowing down from the top of the hill, whipping freshly falling flakes in to our faces. I had to walk most of the ascent with my head bowed and one hand in front of my face to shield my eyes so that I could have any hope of seeing and even then I usually had to rely on the feet of whoever was in front of me to guide my way. Before I next go walking in such weather, I must remember to invest in some ski goggles or the like.
Despite the slightly harsh conditions, I quite enjoyed battling my way through the snow, ice and wind. It was nice when we stopped to let the slower members of the party catch up and I could turn to face downwind and thus admire the view. An awesome view it was as well: the entire world awash in white, the wind howling all around, and the snow-clouds obscuring the ground below and all but the nearest peaks. Often the paths we walked ran very close to the edge, a few feet all that separated us from a steep drop into a white abyss. Although we were only a little over 800m up, the blizzardy conditions and the limited visibility in all dimensions gave the feeling of being high atop some lonely, snow-clad mountain range, like in some sort of epic fantasy film. I would've loved to have taken some photos but didn't feel brave enough to take my gloves off in order to work my phone. Must bring a proper camera next time.
Sadly we didn't make the peak we were aiming for. At one point we stopped and asked a pair of returning walkers how much further the summit was: they estimated 2km. I was quite happy to carry but most of our group had had enough of the gales and snow and so voted to turn back. I found the descent almost harder than the ascent, not in terms of physical effort but certainly in terms of the steady feet and balance required. For short stretches of the steeper sections I deliberately resorted to sliding unceremoniously down the hillside on my backside instead of trying to walk down and end up doing much the same accidentally. Despite this I still managed to slip several times on the way down (mostly after we passed the wall the marked the beginning of the heavy snow, though more snow had fallen below this point when we passed in on our way back) compared to just once on the way up.
We stopped for lunch just after we passed the wall on the way down, then carried on the scenic route (by which I mean the walk leaders misread the map and almost carried us on to private farmland) through the valley to Glenriddig. This was, by comparison to what had preceded it, a gentle country stoll and largely uneventful, aside from minor misnavigations and seeing a red squirrel scurry across our path. Even despite cutting our journey short ours was still the last group back to the pub, although none of the other groups reached their intended peaks either. We walked for roughly five hours. My phone tells me we walked a little under 9km, but looking at its GPS plot of the route it's missing large sections and many stretches are far too straight to be remotely accurate. All in all the walk was great fun even though we didn't make the peak and despite (or perhaps partly because of) the unpleasant conditions.
The way Newcastle University Fellwalking Society works is they hire a coach to drive a bus-load of enthusiastic walkers out to whichever quiet, country village is to be the starting point to the day's walks and then we all split off into groups going on different walks depending on ability. I chose the intermediate of the three walks on offer, aiming for St. Sunday's Crag.
The walk started off easy enough as it entailed getting back on the bus as one of the groups were starting off a bit further up the road than the other two and the coach was still hanging around by the time we got organised. Having gotten off the bus again, the first part of the walk was a pleasant, woodland stroll, with the only difficulty being in finding bits of the path that weren't iced over.
The first ascent was probably also the steepest, but somehow despite this being my first walk in several months and also quite a fast walk due to the distance we intended to cover, I managed to keep pace with the walk leader quite happily. We stopped at a wall running along the hillside part way up to admire the view. Being a fairly grey day one couldn't see very far, but there was still a nice (in a fairly grim, wintery sort of way) view of the valley leading down to a lake (possibly Ullswater - my geography is pretty poor and I didn't get a good look at the map at any point). It looked a little something like this:
I also took a picture of some of the hills on the other side of the valley, but I couldn't tell you what they're called.
The first signs of snow came on the approach to the gate in the aforementioned wall. This snow was thin and well-trodden, so fairly treacherous. Things did not bode well when we passed the gate to find the rest of the ascent blanketed in white and parties ahead of us stopping to equip crampons and unpack their ice axes. Fortunately, as we climbed higher we found the snow was thick and soft enough to yield beneath our boots but dense enough to provide sure footing. The only remote danger was the tendency of the snow to smooth out the landscape, so that what then when you put your foot down you never know whether you're going to sink a couple inches or up past your knee (as indeed happened in one or two places), or conceal frozen trickles of water, which caught out some of the other walkers in our group, but thankfully not myself. More vexing was the constant gale blowing down from the top of the hill, whipping freshly falling flakes in to our faces. I had to walk most of the ascent with my head bowed and one hand in front of my face to shield my eyes so that I could have any hope of seeing and even then I usually had to rely on the feet of whoever was in front of me to guide my way. Before I next go walking in such weather, I must remember to invest in some ski goggles or the like.
Despite the slightly harsh conditions, I quite enjoyed battling my way through the snow, ice and wind. It was nice when we stopped to let the slower members of the party catch up and I could turn to face downwind and thus admire the view. An awesome view it was as well: the entire world awash in white, the wind howling all around, and the snow-clouds obscuring the ground below and all but the nearest peaks. Often the paths we walked ran very close to the edge, a few feet all that separated us from a steep drop into a white abyss. Although we were only a little over 800m up, the blizzardy conditions and the limited visibility in all dimensions gave the feeling of being high atop some lonely, snow-clad mountain range, like in some sort of epic fantasy film. I would've loved to have taken some photos but didn't feel brave enough to take my gloves off in order to work my phone. Must bring a proper camera next time.
Sadly we didn't make the peak we were aiming for. At one point we stopped and asked a pair of returning walkers how much further the summit was: they estimated 2km. I was quite happy to carry but most of our group had had enough of the gales and snow and so voted to turn back. I found the descent almost harder than the ascent, not in terms of physical effort but certainly in terms of the steady feet and balance required. For short stretches of the steeper sections I deliberately resorted to sliding unceremoniously down the hillside on my backside instead of trying to walk down and end up doing much the same accidentally. Despite this I still managed to slip several times on the way down (mostly after we passed the wall the marked the beginning of the heavy snow, though more snow had fallen below this point when we passed in on our way back) compared to just once on the way up.
We stopped for lunch just after we passed the wall on the way down, then carried on the scenic route (by which I mean the walk leaders misread the map and almost carried us on to private farmland) through the valley to Glenriddig. This was, by comparison to what had preceded it, a gentle country stoll and largely uneventful, aside from minor misnavigations and seeing a red squirrel scurry across our path. Even despite cutting our journey short ours was still the last group back to the pub, although none of the other groups reached their intended peaks either. We walked for roughly five hours. My phone tells me we walked a little under 9km, but looking at its GPS plot of the route it's missing large sections and many stretches are far too straight to be remotely accurate. All in all the walk was great fun even though we didn't make the peak and despite (or perhaps partly because of) the unpleasant conditions.