Skiddaw

Sunday 11th April 2004

On this walk I climbed a fell that I had failed to climb the year before due to the bad weather. Skiddaw is a three thousand feet high mountain that dominates the scene around Keswick and draws crowds of people up its wide footpaths. The previous year I had tried to climb Skiddaw on the Edge, a narrow ridge that passes over Ullock Pike before rising to the heights of Skiddaw Man. After being thwarted in my efforts then due to the bad weather (although my inexperience may have really been why I turned back – a few years later and I would probably have gone up), now I was determined to get to the top so I decided to take the wide tourist route up. Most tourists would have actually driven a least a third of the way up Skiddaw, to the car park at the end of Gale Road before starting their ascent, however I didn’t have a car to use and I preferred a more honest starting point, so I started from the Youth Hostel in Keswick walking across Fitz Park to Spoony Green Lane where I began a lovely climb through woodland around Latrigg.

I didn’t divert from my intended destination by going to the top of Latrigg, but followed the very clear path beyond climbing steeply up the hillside. Eventually the steep climb eased with the path turning towards to the north-west to a fence on Jenkin Hill. I didn’t cross the fence, but turned off the main path and kept the fence to my right all the way up to Little Man, a prominent mountain that suffers from its close association to Skiddaw, and is even sometimes named after it: Skiddaw Little Man. The only reason I was going to the top was to bag it, however Wainwright failed to recommend the Skiddaw Tourist Route as a way up Little Man and I think a mere walk along the ridge to ‘bag it’ does Little Man a disservice. A proper climb of Little Man from Millbeck or Applethwaite is demanded to fully appreciate the true stature of this mountain.

Coming back down the ridge on the other side of Little Man I rejoined the tourist track and continued up the stony path to the summit of Skiddaw. On this Easter Sunday there were crowds of people milling around the top, including a man with a huge aerial on his back making or receiving radio transmissions. I quickly walked north away from the crowds on the summit to the north top, which I found to be curiously devoid of people. In clear weather I’m sure the views northwards would have been terrific, unfortunately on this occasion I was surrounded by clouds, however as I returned to the summit the eastern slopes opened up to reveal stunning vistas of the surrounding country. On my subsequent visits to the top of Skiddaw I have always suffered with poor weather (often snow, which makes finding a suitable picture to accompany this blog difficult), and so I rarely have a view. On this occasion I had good weather, but patchy cloud meaning any views were fleeting at best.

Eventually I began to descend loose slopes south-west towards Carl Side with the scenery finally opening up to give me glorious sunlit views of the adjacent valleys and across Bassenthwaite Lake. My descent on the loose stones seemed pathless on a featureless unrelentingly steep slope and not to my liking. I would have hated to have tried to walk up it so thought despite the crowds on the tourist route that would have been preferable to this hard slog. Having subsequently climbed this steep slope I now know there are paths that take a gentler route up, but there are no exciting routes up the steep, smooth slopes of Skiddaw. A short climb brought me to the top of Carl Side where I was able to view the delicious scenes of Derwent Water to the south; the weather had been improving by the minute finally producing the picture postcard scenes that you only get in the Lake District.

From Carl Side I headed north along Longside Edge over Ullock Pike and down the Edge, the ridge that I had tried to use as my ascent route the year before. This time I had a fabulous walk in excellent weather with extensive views to the north and with views to the west and south that kept improving all the time. The summit of Skiddaw was now the only place in the area that resolutely held onto its clouds. Once I was off the Edge I turned around and headed back to Keswick through Dodd Wood walking just a short distance away from the road for much of the way before heading up to the villages of Millbeck and Applethwaite where there is an amazing vantage point and a diagram that shows a plan of the view before you over Keswick and across Derwent Water with the fells of Borrowdale lining the horizon. By now it was a clear hot day with every hill out of the clouds; the view was stunning. Why go abroad when you can have views like this?