Cumbrian Traverse 1 – Rucksack Club 0

Or more accurately the weather was the winner on the day!  Having watched all the weather forecast sites from Monday, including the mountain weather for the Cumbrian mountains, we should have been basking in sunshine by Saturday afternoon.  Instead we battled throughout the day in strengthening winds gusting to such an extent that even the sturdiest of the four man team was struggling to maintain an upright position.  This proved treacherous on rocks slippery from a combination of light/heavy rain to horizontal hail on the Crinkles. 

Disappointing, but a good day’s walk with lots of climbing miles in the legs.  Despite the conditions, we were still 20 minutes up on the originator’s roughly 15-hour schedule, when we decided to bail out and descend to the comfort of the Chippy in Keswick.

Tops ticked were:

1. Great Stickle
2. Stickle Pike
3. Caw
4. White Maiden
5. Brown Pike
6. Dow Crag
7. Old Man of Coniston
8. Swirl How
9. Great Carrs
10. Cold Pike
11. Crinkle Crags
12. Bowfell
13. Esk Pike

At this point with all four of us suffering badly from the cold, even with every item of emergency clothing donned, it was decided that the descents ahead off Great End and Gable would be just too dangerous.  Nobody was keen to spend another five or six hours in these conditions on the high fells.  Ian remembering this bit of his ‘55’ wasn’t ready for an action replay – at least not this weekend!

From Esk Hause we made our way down the valley to Seathwaite, picking up footpaths to Keswick.  The Cumbrian Traverse is there for another day, we did succeed in our walk from Broughton Mills to Keswick, giving us  30.5 miles and  8663ft of ascent.

Tops outstanding:

1. Great End
2. Great Gable
3. Green Gable
4. Brandreth
5. Grey Knotts
6. High Spy
7. Maiden Moor
8. Cat Bells

This was intended to be a good warm up for the Fellsman in May, frustratingly the knee pain experienced on the Amble reappeared later in the day, along with a very ‘tight’ lower back – obviously connected, which doesn’t auger well.  My hope is that this was a result of the twisting/wrenching etc on the extremely rough terrain and that it will settle down fairly quickly.  Although the Fellsman is twice the distance, the terrain is much more benign even with a similar amount of climbing.  Fingers crossed!

NLN

PS – weather precluded any piccies!