Crinkle Crags and all the rest

After completing far more peaks than I'd anticipated the previous day, this was the only walk left - we could have split it into two, but with good conditions it could all be managed in a single day.  The weather report had a chance of rain after lunch, but we took those odds.  We could always have headed back early...

Difficulty: 8
Walkers: Tim, Caroline, Grace (12), Evie (9), Poppy (6 1/2)
9:19, 0.0km 0h00 0m, Start (100)
11:24, 4.5km 2h05 606m, Pike of Blisco (705, Wainwright, Hewitt)
12:23, 6.5km 3h03 768m, Cold Pike (701, Wainwright, Hewitt)
13:40, 8.6km 4h20 933m, Crinkle Crags South Top (First Crinkle) (834, Hewitt)
14:00, 9.2km 4h40 982m, Crinkle Crags (859, Wainwright, Hewitt)
14:32, 9.9km 5h12 995m, Shelter Crags (815, Hewitt)
15:34, 11.6km 6h14 1166m, Bowfell (902, Wainwright, Hewitt)
16:34, 13.3km 7h14 1268m, Esk Pike (885, Wainwright, Hewitt)
19:35, 21.0km 10h15 1358m, End (100)

Keen to avoid several miles of road walking, we parked at the Old Dungeon Ghyll NT car park.  Around the same time as the previous day, but the clouds meant lots of spaces.  

Along the valley floor, then starting the climb up, around 600m of ascent before the first peak, around two thirds of that to get to Red Tarn.

Top of Pike of Blisco, views across to Windermere, Red Tarn and the Langdale valley, and also to the Old Man of Coniston.

Now down to Red Tarn, and trying to avoid much of the bogs at the bottom, up to Cold Pike.  Poppy wasn't too happy - turned out her trousers were too tight, but we managed to find the actual path up to the ridge on the left - a big win over when Caroline and I had walked up here.  Meanwhile, Grace & Evie had decided on the direct ascent up the steepest route, and Caroline gamely followed them.  We were first to the top by a while...  The second photo shows the route to the Crinkle Crags.

After crossing much of the distance, we decided it was lunch time, so found a sheltered spot overlooking the valley.  It was pretty windy all along the ridge, I'm assuming it's always like this. 

Up to the first Crinkle Crag, Evie clearly not impressed by climbing merely a Hewitt.  Still, a good view down the valley.

Now to the second Crinkle, looking ahead here to the walk to come - along to Shelter Crags, and then up to Bowfell and Esk Pike all the way to the left of the picture.

Now at Shelter Crags, another Rhubarb and Custard each to distribute.

A rare non-peak shot, showing the walk ahead up to Bowfell.

I had great memories of the diagonal slabs of rock, which weren't as large as I'd remembered.  Clearly I've just grown since last time.

Now at the top of Esk Pike - the weather had held off, despite the cloud cover there had been no rain.  So we'd made the full walk, and had officially run out of Langdale peaks with a day to spare.

Time for the long walk back down the hill to the car.

Driving, rain and hobbling

After my knee was hurting from the day before, now is the time to confess that it was actually injured from running already, and I already and proscription anti-inflammatory drugs, so I dosed myself up (I'm sure my liver wasn't that happy) and we set off for a shorter walk before driving back down south.  The weather report wasn't great, but how bad could it really be for a short walk?

Difficulty: 3
Walkers: Tim, Caroline
10:58, 0.0km 0h00 0m, Start (384)
12:22, 2.9km 1h23 324m, Cold Pike (701)
13:20, 4.6km 2h21 493m, Pike of Blisco (705)
14:57, 7.1km 3h59 507m, End (382)

We parked the car up Wrynose Pass, to be honest I had partly picked the walk since I know it was going to be a fun drive in the car up the pass...

The view looking back to the car, we started up heading for the Red Tarn.

I think this is called an 'optimistic' path on the map.  This basically means that we headed straight up the fell with no visible path, but picking our way through the grass and trying to avoid the worse of the rocky outcrops.  It could just have been our bad navigation, so let's not rule out having another go at this route.  At least we got to look down to Red Tarn and know we were going in the right direction,

Okay, let's not beat about the bush.  The weather now was really terrible.  Very occasionally the clouds parted for a few seconds allowing you to see more than just the bog underfoot, this is the view looking north.  However the rest of the time it was not great.  The only thing to be grateful for was that we were sheltered from the worse of the wind by the hill.

The view up to the top of Cold Pike.

The top of Cold Pike.  At this point we hit the wind, which combined with the rain and wet slippery rocks made this a wonderful place to be.

So we left pretty quickly.  We got back down to just above Red Tarn the the knee was feeling pretty good, so we headed up towards Pike O' Blisco.

This is kind of near the top.  At this point, things were as blurred as the photo - it was great to get to the top, but better since we could start going downhill.  Finding the right path was a little challenging, but we found a way that looked about right.

Turns out we were not quite right, so ended up having to get down from this cliff like rock formation.  I'm still quite amazed that Caroline got down safely, but it really was the better prospect than having to climb back up and find a better way down.  This is one of the reasons why I don't share the exact gps route - sometimes you really don't want to go the same way we did...

The only downside is that soon after this my knee gave out in quite a major way.  So for the last mile or two Caroline helped me down, as I leaned on her to take the weight off that leg.  I really did feel pretty useless and foolish for tried to accomplish the little that we did attempt on this walk.  Still, this photo marked a significant moment - we could see the car again...  It did occur to me that if we saw anyone trying to steal it then there was nothing we could have done to reach them in time, but thankfully (perhaps not surprisingly) no-one else was visible at all, and when we finally reached the car I was even able to drive with one dodgy leg all the way back to Birmingham.