When we came to Cumbria the second
time, our intention had been to do the ridge walk to Wetherlam from
The Old Man of Coniston, but our inexperience at the time meant
we decided not to go on from The Old Man because we were not sure
of how long it would take us.
But we looked at the map again with hindsight,
and worked out that an almost indentical walk was possible by climbing
to Dow Crag, then dropping to Goats Hause, and bypassing the Old
Man by going straight to Brim Fell, then taking up the ridge walk
as previously planned.
When we got to the car parking area, we found
the weather was similar to the first time we were here, which is
very low cloud. |
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Towards goats water from walna scar road |
| We walked along Walna Scar Road towards
Brown Pike, the first peak on the ridge to Dow Crag's summit. |
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brown pike from walna scar road |
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Coniston Water from Walna Scar Road |
| By the time we reached Brown Pike's
summit, the cloud was down and we did not linger, but walked straight
on to Buck Pike. |
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David at the summit of Buck pike |
| From Buck Pike there was not a great
deal more climbing to be done before the summit of Dow Crag. The visibility
was terrible, but we did not fail to be impressed by what we could
see of it. |
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david at dow crag's summit |
| After Dow Crag, we dropped down to
Goats Hause, where we were able to see just a little more than last
time. |
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Looking towards goats hause |
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The path ahead at goats hause |
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at goats hause |
| At Goats Hause we were able to pick
up the path leading almost straight to Brim Fell's summit. |
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Ascent of Brim Fell from Goats Hause |
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David at the summit of brim fell |
| From here we turned north, following
the ridge towards Levers Hause, from where we were able to catch glimpses
of Levers Water through gaps in the cloud. |
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levers water from levers hause |
The ridge continues to Swirl How,
but near Great How Crags we nearly had a mishap when the path forked
without us noticing, and suddenly the path disappeared and we were
looking straight down a sheer drop.
We soon retraced our steps and found the right
path, and without any further problems reached Swirl How's summit. |
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David at the summit of swirl how |
From Swirl How, we walked down
the steep path, called the Prison Band, to Swirl Hawse, from where
we would later descend towards Levers Water.
For now, we walked back up the path by the side
of Black Sails, with the cloud lifting all the time. Soon we were
able to look down towards Little Langdale and see Greenburn Tarn. |
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Greenburn tarn |
| From here, the ridge is not steep,
and the walk to Wetherlam was much more pleasant and straightforward
than we had expected from looking at it from Wrynose. |
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The Prison Band |
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The Prison Band |
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Towards wetherlam |
| We were also lucky in that the cloud
had lifted, so the way ahead was easily distinguished. |
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walking towards wetherlam |
| Before too long, we reached Wetherlam's
summit, from where we were able to see quite a long way towards the
Langdales and also Windermere. |
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david at wetherlam's summit |
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little langdale from wetherlam |
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Blea Tarn and Little Langdale Tarn |
After enjoying the views for a
while, we started heading back towards the Prison Band.
We had one more Top 100 peak to do, which was
Black Sails, and in spite of the cloud lifting, we were not completely
certain which was its summit. We found what looked like it could
be a summit cairn, but looking at the map, we were not in the right
place, so after a quick photo, we set off again in search of the
elusive peak. |
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Not black Sails |
| We found it in the end though, and
while David had his photo taken, a couple of other walkers joined
us by the summit cairn, which surprised us, because it is one of those
peaks I suspect most people bypass. I should have asked them if they
were doing the Top 100 peaks too! |
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at the summit of Black sails |
After leaving Black Sails, we made
a mistake. The path split and David followed the upper section,
whilst I stayed on the lower part nearest the edge. This was a silly
thing to do as we were heading back into the cloud and, with hindsight,
quite obviously we did not find each other back at Swirl Hawse and
the Prison Band.
As I was carrying the map, I was not sure if
David knew which way to go, and as I stood looking back up the mountain
for him, I was joined by the other two walkers from Black Sails.
I told them what had happened, and luckily one of them spotted David's
red coat further down towards Levers Water. He had known where we
were heading, and decided to drop down in the direction of Levers
Water, where the visibility was better, which was of course a sensible
thing to do under the circumstances, and it did teach us not to
stray too far from each other when there is mist about. |
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levers water from the prison band |
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Looking back up the prison band |
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looking back on our descent route to levers water |
| Having met up again, we walked to
Levers Water, then followed the path past the Youth Hostel to Miners
Bridge, where we crossed the stream and walked back to Walna Scar
Road. |
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Near levers water |
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Descent to Levers Water |
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Levers water beck |
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Looking towards brim fell |
