Crinkle Crags by compass - No photos today
It is raining as I arrive at the Old Dungeon Ghyll hotel, it’s going to be a wet day. Start today by going up The Band but as I get to the final stretch up to Three Tarns there is a path which veers off to the right slightly, I miss the start of it but I know it is there and I see it.
It has stopped raining but thick mist remains, this is the first time I have approached Bowfell’s Climbers Traverse from this direction and I am slightly apprehensive as the path fades but reappears along the ridge. Eventually I recognise the constructed path that I came across last week following my unauthordox traverse of Bowfell’s lower slopes.
The Climber’s Traverse seems more intimidating this week, the slope is steep but the mist hides it and it would be easy to feel disoriented. The path ends at the soaring crags of Bowfell Buttress but I can’t see them, there is a real spout of water issuing from the base of Cambridge Crags.
Up the steep slope alongside the Great Slab and visit the summit of Bowfell that I have to myself, not an uncommon occurrence when it is misty. Down to Three Tarns, I meet another walker – the first person I have seen for nearly three hours. Three Tarns is confusing in mist and I lose the path, I have to go back to the tarns and follow the shore line until I find the footpath going south.
I have crossed the ridge of Crinkle Crags many times and it is a very different place in the mist but I should have realised where I was when I lost the footpath again. Only when I started to descend a steep, rocky path did I realise I was on my way down to the Bad Step – not what I wanted to do in these conditions but at least in realising where I was I was able to make a course correction.
On descending the last of the Crinkles I am below the general cloud base so I decide to visit Cold Pike before going on to Pike o’ Blisco. I make the easy climb to the top of Great Knott from where I can see the way up to the summit of Cold Pike.
The easy ascent of Cold Pike is uninspiring without the views, but the top is a fascinating place. Wainwright notes three summits but there an additional two lower peaks which are similar to each other but like nothing else I have seen in the Lake District, as though molten rock has been poured on the top and has quickly cooled to a smooth flat finish. Three of the peaks have their own cairn, the others have the scars where cairns have been destroyed – were these cairns vandalised at the same time as that of Pike o’ Blisco that Wainwright wrote about in his conclusion to Book Four?
Rejoin the path to Red Tarn and then down the steep constructed path from Red Tarn to Oxendale, the sun now shining brightly.
Andy Wallace 29th September 2001