The first walk of 2013 is here and with a fair bit of snow fall, even at ground level, over the past few weeks, it suggested it would be a good one.  Just me and Peter on this one and he came to pick me up at 6.30 am. Peter had bought me a copy of “The Bible”, the book we were basing all of our walks on, with the definitive list of the 71 mountains we were walking. I was chuffed with that, cheers Peter.

We set off for the Lakes and the first topic of conversation was where we would go.  Earlier in the week we had discussed the possibility of around Coniston or High Spy.  We narrowed it down to Wetherlam or Crinkle Crags.  Whilst I had done Crinkle Crags before, I had not dated it so would have to do it again for the record.  The route around Wetherlam may be difficult in bad visibility and as we got further west, the cloud was lower.  So we decided on Crinkle Crags.  We headed towards Ambleside and then took the turning towards the Langdales.  We parked at the Dungeon Ghyll Old hotel, had a quick pasty, put the boots on and set off just after 9.00 am.  There was low cloud and we couldn’t see the tops so it looked like this was the better option to choose.

We walked through the gate and set off towards the farm a half mile or so along the road. Then, through the farm and out the gate on the other side.  Just after the gate we could choose to take a right up The Band or straight on into Oxendale.  We chose Oxendale and walked into the valley.  Eventually reaching a footbridge which again presented us with a decision to cross or go straight on.  We went straight on beginning to climb slowly.  After a short while we reached another footbridge and decided to cross this one and took a right up the hill after the footbridge.  Just a little further up the path we took our first bait stop overlooking a waterfall with a nice pool at the bottom.  Even though we only stopped for 10 minutes or so, we were getting quite wet with the fine mist that was in the air.

We set off again, climbing further and crossed the stream twice.  After only half an hour or so we were reaching the snow line and the path became difficult to follow.  Very soon we had lost the path altogether and we were walking on virgin snow.  We were continuing to go upwards though so in the right direction!  By now we were in quite deep snow and each step was taking its toll, onwards and upwards! We could hear voices off to our right and knew this was the main path higher up the Band so we were veering over towards that direction. 

 

 Crinkle Crags summit

Eventually not far from the summit we joined the path and reached the pass where we could turn right to Bow Fell or carry on through Shelter Crags onto Crinkle Crags.

 

 

We stopped for some lunch and I strapped on some Yaktrax I had bought the previous week.  They are ice grips for your boots to help you get a better grip.

We reached the summit on the second Crinkle at 12.45 but not even time for a quick photo as it was freezing cold, so we turned back and headed for the path we had come up on.  As we were descending now the snow was taking our weight and it was much easier on the legs.  However I looked down and noticed I had lost a Yaktrax off my right boot!  I had only had them on about 20 minutes.  Peter kindly offered to back track and have a look.  It was gone though!  They were only a tenner from Go Outdoors.

We continued to descend for another 20 minutes or so.  Then we came across quite a large number of people ascending with quite a lot of children.  It was the start of half term but a few of them didn’t look too happy to be climbing in that tiring snow.

By now we had been walking in snow for about 5 hours and eventually we reached the snow line on the way down.  I seemed to get a better grip on the wet rocks with my Yaktrax (well my left foot was).  I think I will bring them for wet walks in future as well.  We got back down to the bottom of the Band and back to the farm for just after 3 pm. Quite a long walk but the longest part was ascending.  I was quite pleased with my knees on the descent today.

A good, snowy walk with a hard ascent in deep snow but an easier descent today. This time Crinkle Crags has a date against it and its officially number 41 out of 71.

See you on the next walk.