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Monday, 5th of June
Mr Blue Sky is living here today!
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Pike Howe
Pike of Stickle and Loft Crag
I slept very little the previous night due to my injured back. Staying in any one position for long was very painful, and the most comfortable way of sleeping turned out to be curled up in a foetal ball on my right side. My entire spine seemed to lock up during the course of the night, and when I came to get up the next morning, even the process of sitting up in my tent was very painful.
Still, I'm known for my stubbornness and optimism, and a mere bad back wasn't going to stop me getting out there and enjoying the mountains!
As things turned out, I did indeed enjoy myself, but this was a very hard day and it took a lot out of me. I made some questionable decisions due to the odd mental state I was in and ended up getting myself into bad situations again. I was actually pretty lucky to see the day through without further injury or worse. The motto of this story is, never go climbing the day directly after a bad fall resulting in injury. It messes you up both physically and mentally ... even if you don't realise the latter at the time.
Pike Howe
Looking up towards the Crinkles, over a dried-up Great Langdale Beck, from the bridge at Old Dungeon Ghyll.
I knew it would be a scorchingly hot day, so took about three litres of water with me. The plan was to head up the Pike Howe Route into the Langdale Pikes, trying my hand at a couple of Grade Two scrambles on the way up: Pike Howe, and Harrison Stickle South-West Face. This was a foolishly optimistic plan given the fact that my back was extremely stiff, but I'd been waiting to try these climbs for months now and I wasn't going to back down easily.
Despite the rising heat, the weather was exceptionally clear and the walk-in along the Old Road was a joy. The mountains at the dalehead of the valley were looking magnificent as ever, despite a conspicuous lack of snow!
Bowfell ... a mountain for mountaineers, if ever there was one
Lower Langdale, from the rise just above Stickle Ghyll
It took me a little longer to reach the start of the Pike Howe Route than usual, but I wasn't discouraged. The first crag on the route looked inviting, despite a voice of fear in the back of my head that has been present in varing strengths ever since ... that fall off Side Pike robbed me of the fearlessness I used to rely on to see me through bold and exposed scrambles. It took me a couple of weeks of climbing difficult trees back home in Suffolk to stop the shaking limbs.
Pike Howe, Grade 2*
It took me a few minutes to find an initial line that I was comfortable with. The first tilting slab, although furnished with excellent holds, was at an awkward angle and my stiff back protested at the treatment. Eventually I found a route that would go, however, and progressed towards the base of a small holly tree half way up the cliff. So far the terrain was harder than a typical Grade 1 but nowhere near as difficult as the vertical pitch I'd climbed the previous day. It was enough to challenge me (and make me swear, once or twice!), but not enough to make me fear for my life again. I was doing this alone and unroped, after all.
The first crag, showing the line I took. The "Clean Slab" starts just behind the holly tree.
I reached the holly tree without too much trouble. From this point, the line traverses left across a mossy, fairly broken slab towards another small tree and a a grassy shelf.
The holly tree
"Holly Tree Traverse", as I called it
The most difficult point of the scramble so far now lay directly above me. A steep slab, vegetated along the crack lines but otherwise pretty clean (which is why I called it "Clean Slab"), towered directly above the narrow grass shelf. This slab looked like a fairly serious undertaking so at this point I decided to stop and put my helmet on. I discovered that the grass shelf was also sloping and rather slippery, which led to some annoyance when I dropped my helmet a few metres down to the next shelf and had to retreat to pick it up!
Clean Slab. It's steeper than it looks in this photo.
The view from above the Holly Tree Traverse
My first attempt, in which I tried to climb the slab directly up the more-or-less blank face, failed. The holds were not good enough to make me feel safe and I was gripped by a sudden terror of what would happen if I should slip. The memory of falling 20 feet off Side Pike was still disturbingly fresh in my mind and I had no desire to go through that again. I downclimbed back to the shelf, a little frustrated with my newly-found limitations but content that I was doing the right thing in backing off. It was at least fifty feet from the shelf down to the valley floor, with only a couple of narrow ledges in between, and at the time I felt certain that a fall from this point would kill me. Looking back, I was probably being unecessarily timid, but as a friend said to me after I got back, near death experiences change everything.
I was still committed to continuing the scramble, however. Time to find another line. Traversing left along the treacherous grassy shelf, I found a positive crack slanting up the face of the slab. It was filled with heather and bracken at points but seemed a lot more secure than the blank face a few feet to the right. It was only after I started up this crack that I discovered that the slab directly above me was slightly overhanging. This made handholds hard to find and pushed me out from the face of the cliff, which was unnerving.
However I got myself up the crack fairly quickly, with a minimal amount of swearing, and discovered that I'd just finished the crux of the first crag. Ahead lay an easy rib leading to the next sprawling mass of rock. I made my way along here then took some time inspecting the base of this crag for the most suitable line.
The rest of the route was considerably easier, more akin to Grade 1 terrain really, although I must admit I was choosing the easier lines. I found Pike Howe an excellent way of gaining height as opposed to the fairly tedious path. It's broken up with stretches of grass in between the fun parts, but the rock is really quite good and it obviously doesn't get a lot of traffic. Now that my scrambling-sense has recovered as much as it ever will (thanks to the superb tree climbs less than half a mile from my house!), I'm sure I would have a lot more fun on Pike Howe and better appreciate its challenges.
The rest of the path leading up to Harrison Combe was well-known to me. I made poor time along this section of the route, however, because I was already starting to feel tired. I probably shouldn't have tried to climb anything the day directly after the accident, but when I'm determined to do something there's little that can discourage me.
The cavernous depths of Dungeon Ghyll, with Thorn Crag and Harrison Stickle behind
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Pike of Stickle and Loft Crag
The sky had really started to fill in by this point, but it was still pretty warm
The starting-point of the South-West Face scramble supposedly began pretty close to the path, so I went to take a look. The guidebook's description of the line was unhelpfully cryptic and ambiguous. After eyeing several lines suspiciously, all of which seemed far too steep and messy for a Grade 2, I tried out a route that looked just about possible but didn't really fit the description in the book. This turned out to be a mistake.
My arms were pumped within no time at all, due in part to the steep rock and bad footholds, but mostly because I was already tired. I soon reached a horrible grassy ledge under a big overhang. One line looked doable, but then again so had that cliff the previous evening. I was starting to feel the fear again and started swearing pretty much constantly, again convinced I would die if I fell off ... yet this time it was only fifteen feet down to ground level, if that, and there was soft moss at the bottom (instead of big rocks, like last time). At some point during the course of the day I had started to become very superstitious about climbing and strongly believed that if this were to become the third 'panic point' in the trip so far (the second being my first attempt on Clean Slab), fate wouldn't let me survive this time.
With hindsight, starting up this serious rock pitch in such a mental and physical state was a stupid idea. Accepting that I would do no more scrambling that day, I dropped my pack down and very carefully downclimbed back to ground level. It was only a short pitch, but it was the hardest bit of downclimbing I've ever done and I have no wish to feel so unsafe ever again..
The sense of defeat, and being thwarted by fears that hadn't been present only a day before, was powerful. Dejected, I continued to walk up the trail through the ravine and towards the valley between Harrison Stickle and the western Langdale Pikes.
Harrison Stickle from the easy side
My plan had originally been to climb Harrison Stickle, but by this point I just didn't feel capable of climbing the remaining height to the summit. This tiredness was undoubtably physical in part, but I think it was mostly a form of mental block. I'd never felt this way in the mountains before. It was as if I'd simply given up and convinced myself I couldn't do it. For someone who has always believed it's better to assume you can do something until finding out you can't, this was an odd state to find myself in.
Somewhere between giving up on Harrison Stickle and sitting on a boulder eating my lunch, reason cut through the weird fog of defeatism and confusion. "Look right in front of you," I told myself. "There are two Langdale Pikes less than half a mile away that are much lower and easier to reach than Harrison Stickle, and you haven't even climbed one of them yet. Get off your behind and go climb it!"
I had an objective again, and it was a good one. Pike of Stickle, perhaps best-known of the Pikes, was not far away. Strangely, I had never got around to climbing this one until now, but it's a fine little mountain that requires some very easy scrambling to reach the summit.
The Crinkle Crags ridge, from Pike of Stickle
The summit of Pike of Stickle
The climb to Pike of Stickle's magnificent summit turned out to be even easier than I had anticipated. The scrambling that Wainwright describes in The Central Fells consists of little more than a couple of handhold-assisted moves up a steep and rocky path, although harder alternatives exist. I was feely distinctly unlucky by this point so didn't take them. The summit was busy, with maybe a dozen people sitting and admiring the view, which is pretty good.
Bowfell looms massively across Mickleden. Scafell Pike, Esk Pike, Great End and Allen Crags may also be seen.
Great End, Allen Crags, Red Pike, Great Gable, and Green Gable
The Gimmer face of Loft Crag, with Windermere above
Happier now that I'd experienced my first 'summit fix' since April, I descended back to the plateau and made my way over to Loft Crag. I'd climbed this just over a year previously and greatly enjoyed the beautiful views and solitude of this lesser-known Langdale Pike. It's an easy re-ascent and despite the fact that I was pretty tired by this point, I managed it without any trouble.
Pike of Stickle's surprising profile is excellently seen from this viewpoint, as is the valley far below.
Pike of Stickle seen from Loft Crag
Bowfell looking large!
Two examples of the same shape on an altogether different scale:
Pike of Stickle in the foreground, and the giant dome of Great Gable in the background
After spending a little time on the summit of Loft Crag, I descended back into Langdale. For a change I decided to take the "Tourist Route" in descent, a path I'd avoided up until that point due to its reputation as a poor-quality, eroded trail. However it was one of the only main routes into the Pikes that I'd never used so far and was curious to see what it was like.
It was indeed eroded! The upper section is a steep and scree-ridden trench, thoroughly unpleasant and rather unnerving in descent. It does improve further down but is not to be preferred to the Pike Howe Route or Stickle Ghyll. It's also a great deal busier than Pike Howe.
I reached the tent utterly exhausted and spent. What should have been an easy and relaxing day of fellwalking, with a little hard scrambling thrown in to spice things up, had sapped all of my strength and presented massive physical and mental barriers. In spite of the disappointment at having been beaten so easily--and I did consider myself beaten, despite having summitted two of the Pikes--that day taught me a very valuable lesson.
Despite always having believed very strongly in not underestimating the mountains, I have in the past been guilty of overestimating myself. It's not so much a case of overestimating my physical abilities (I have a pretty good idea of how far I can push myself). I made the mistake of thinking that such a serious fall would have no effect on my confidence and thinking processes. As it turned out, the reverse was true. That accident had a massive impact on me and made me afraid of situations that I would have enjoyed before. It also distorted my mountain-sense and influenced me into making some very bad decisions.
I made the mistake of thinking I was mentally tougher than I actually am. The fact is that I'm as human as the next person, just as liable to make mistakes and overreach myself, and just as fragile.
All this started to dawn on me that evening. I chucked out my trip plan for crossing the Scafells, realising this to be wildly above my capabilities at that time. Instead, I chose a far easier day, to a fell I had never climbed and always overlooked simply due to its lower height: Lingmoor Fell.
Langdale from the Tourist Route
Next day: Lingmoor
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