The Lakes, day 6 – Great Gable and the High Stile Ridge

Saturday 20th July 2002

This was a long and tiring day, but a very enjoyable walk. The weather forecast for this day was changeable, but despite the day starting sunny I set off from Borrowdale to Honister Hause feeling a little tired after all the walking that I’d been doing during this holiday. This was now the sixth day of my first ever holiday in the Lake District and I'd done a lot of long and tiring walks, more than I’d ever done before. I was exhausted and feeling the strain of walking all day every day for a whole week. These days this is nothing new to me and I’m used to it, but at this time I hadn’t done more than a couple of days of consecutively walking. Coming to the Lake District for the first time introduced me to a new thing: long walks day after day for over a week, and by now the last thing I felt like doing was another day trudging up into the fells, but that is what I did.

Of course once I got up into the hills I loved it and was climbing lots of fells bagging as many peaks as possible. My route up to Honister was along the tracks of an old toll road which mirrors the modern way for much of the climb to the top of the pass and gave me a trouble free ascent. From Honister I walked to the Drum House on a dismantled tramway and turned left following a clear path towards the boundary fence that surrounds the valley of Ennerdale. Turning left I followed the fence up to bag Brandreth from where I went across the broad saddle to Green Gable before tackling the biggie: Great Gable. Heavy clouds had descended as I approached Brandreth, but as I got to the top of Great Gable they parted to afford me with spectacular views of the valleys below, most notably south along Wasdale, until the cloud descended again and the heavens opened.

It may have been raining heavily as I left Great Gable, but it didn’t last very long and stopped before I got to the col at Beck Head where I back-tracked myself skirting around the north-western slopes of the gables while getting stunning views down Ennerdale thanks to the improving weather. Eventually I rejoined the Ennerdale boundary fence near Brandreth and turning away from Brandreth I followed the fence towards Haystacks. From the top of Loft Beck I tried to make my own route direct to Haystacks, but quickly found myself in trouble in very boggy ground. I have since discovered that the easiest route between Brandreth and Haystacks is to take a path, itself sometimes boggy, past Great Round How to join the Warnscale path past Blackbeck Tarn. These days I would love to explore these pathless slopes north of Loft Beck, but back then I just wished I’d gone another way. Eventually I reached Innominate Tarn and just beyond that is the top of Haystacks, the fell was beloved of Wainwright and the tarn is where his ashes were scattered.

The weather had been improving steadily since it had rained while I was coming down from Great Gable and by now it was a glorious day. When faced with the choice of whether to descend to Buttermere at this point or keep going, I decided to keep going along the ridge. A gruelling, steep climb up the shifting screes of Gamlin End failed to dampen my enthusiasm as I passed along this glorious ridge that overlooks Buttermere. The fells of High Crag, High Stile and Red Pike passed quickly underfoot as I sailed along the fantastic ridge in glorious sunny weather. I felt that I must be rather nuts but I had got into the swing of it, and I was loving every moment.  By the time I got to Red Pike it was 4.30 so I decided I needed to make a quick descent off the fell in order to get to the hostel in time to order my dinner so I took the bridlepath down beside Sourmilk Gill instead of my planned descent down the long western slopes to Scale Force. Unfortunately I have never walked down the long western slopes of Red Pike but I was able to visit the waterfall of Scale Force a couple of years ago while staying in Buttermere for the New Year.

This walk ranks alongside my traverse of Scafell Pike a couple of days earlier as being an early memorable walk of mammoth proportions. It was ironic that at the start of the walk I was beginning to feel tired of such long walks day after day only to then do a walk that dwarfed almost all of the walks that I’d previously done that week. Great Gable is an awesome mountain that dominates the landscape from wherever it is seen and the High Stile Ridge is a walk of epic proportions. Combining the two in such a long walk was never in my plans for this day, in fact I had planned on walking along the High Stile Ridge on the day after this walk so I was forced to come up with a new walk for the next day. This was a fabulous day's walk in the Lake District that consolidated my love of the fells that continues to this day.