Eski Bow Fell - Photo Gallery

When I arrived at the Old Dungeon Ghyll hotel it was dry and not too cold for a January morning, quite promising apart from the mist covering Crinkle Crags and Bowfell. You have to go behind the hotel to find the start of the path up the valley of Mickleden, you have the best part of two miles to walk before you have to do any climbing.

Walking up the valley the Langdale Pikes high up on the right hand side are very impressive, the mist covered Crinkle Crags and Bowfell look intimidating. As you walk along you can see that the path up towards Stake Pass looks very civilised and the higher section of Rossett Gill looks impossibly steep.

Eventually you pass a stone sheepfold and you have to cross a footbridge which is little more than a wooden platform that bounces up and down as you walk over it. A carved stone signpost shows the two alternatives, take the right hand path for Stake Pass or for my route today the left hand path towards Rossett Gill and Angle Tarn.

The climb alongside Rossett Gill eases you into the increasing gradient and gradually introduces you to rough and rocky ground and leads you the start of the real Rossett Gill. All of the time you are treated to plenty of mountain and valley views as you get higher up the gill. The old Pony Route has been extensively repaired and I suppose the idea is to keep you out of Rossett Gill itself but the steep stony gill is really too interesting to leave alone.

The climb up the gill isn't too tricky if you pick the right line, you can make it more difficult than is necessary if you want to, just don't forget to stop and look behind at the view of the valley below. At the top of the gill is a large cairn, as I got there the wind hit me, a significant chill factor I think. It wasn't in the plan but Rossett Pike seemed to be too close to ignore, so I turned right at the big cairn and headed for the ridge.

It was only five minutes or so before I got to the rocky summit, much more rugged than you might expect after such an easy grassy ridge. The views of mountains and the gill below are good value for the small extra effort involved but at this time of year the time taken did prove to be significant later in the day.

I made my way down to Angle Tarn and for once I had to supplement the one layer of clothing beneath my jacket, that wind was very cold. From Angle Tarn is a very obvious path upwards, it is not that steep but it is quite a long path to the shelter at the foot of Allen Crags. There is a smaller path that you pass on the left that leads to Ore Gap but I wanted to visit Esk Pike before going to Bowfell.

The cross shaped shelter at the hause at the foot of Allen Crags is not Esk Hause, you have to turn left and walk upwards in the direction of Great End to get to the real Esk Hause. On a misty day like today this is the most confusing of places, cairns everywhere except where you want them to be. Esk Pike is on the left and if you go far enough and are observant enough you will find a path. Otherwise just head in the direction of Esk Pike and you should find the path, if you go in the right direction and make sure you are climbing you shouldn't go wrong.

Soon the grassy path assumes the nature of Esk Pike, rocky and rugged, a delightful climb to a splendid summit without having to use too much energy. At the top of the climb you will pass a small crag that has been used to create a small shelter from which you can see the summit cairn. As with many hills, walkers following the path religiously will fail to visit the summit and its cairn of many colours.

The path continues down to Ore Gap, if you lose the path on a misty day then you will be lost. On a sunny day you would find the summit a delightful interesting place and I hope that one day I might experience that. I have only been able to explore the summit in mist and have always been glad to find the path again. As you get closer to Ore Gap the redness of the footpath is striking, an unmistakable feature.

From Ore Gap a line of cairns leads you across a boulder field in the general direction of Bowfell, the ground is too rocky to be worn into a path. After you pass a small craggy outcrop on your right a path materialises and you can follow the cairns to Bowfell. If you follow the path you will get to the summit but you will not see just what a magnificent hill you are on.

Instead of following the path half left, continue in the same direction on grass between the boulders and you will reach a small tarn, well some people might call it a pond. From here you will see a small cairn on the skyline to your left, walk towards it and walk past the rocks on your right. You should see another small cairn on the right showing a grassy pathway through the rocks.

Just keep climbing, there are signs of flattened grass between the rocks but keep going upwards anyway and you should find a cairn at the start of the ridge. On a clear day you would be able to see cairns to guide you along the ridge, on a misty day like today follow the edge of the crags. I got brief glimpses of the ridge and the summit of Bowfell ahead, this is an impressively large hill.

Eventually you reach the cairn at the top of Bowfell Buttress, I waited there for a while and was rewarded with a view of the Great Slab of Flat Crags as the mist cleared briefly. The Great Slab is as interesting from this viewpoint as it is from close up, another impressive feature of an impressive hill.

From the top of Bowfell Buttress you walk past the top of the so called Easy Gully to rejoin the main path for the climb to the rocky summit dome of Bowfell itself, the dome resembling a giant summit cairn. There are signs of walkers having attempted to find a single path over the final rocks but I can't say I have found the same way twice, you have to make your own way over the greasy boulders.

In mist you have to know which way you are going when you descend from the summit of Bowfell, if you go in a south easterly direction you should join the path coming up from Three Tarns. Before you start to descend towards Three Tarns you will come across the top of the Great Slab, a cairn indicates the start of a way downwards on the left.

The climb down is over what Wainwright calls a river of boulders and I can't argue with that description. I lost the path and was swimming along the rocky river and I couldn't remember where the path was. I always worry on steep boulder fields that the rocks will move and take me with them so I headed diagonally downwards to the Great Slab and the path wasn't there. I climbed diagonally downwards to the wall of crags, passing boulders from which pieces had broken off, there were many newly fallen rocks. I did eventually find the path, by the crag wall, just as it turned to steep scree for the final descent to the the spring at the base of Cambridge Crags.

The amount of water issuing from the spring never seems to vary in wet weather or dry. Having realised where you are you suddenly look around and find yourself surrounded by magnificent mountain scenery and wonderful views down to the valley when gaps in the mist occur.

From here the Climbers Traverse path is not easy to find, you have to almost double back on yourself over unlikely looking steep, wet bouldery ground. The path runs along the edge of Flat Crags below the Great Slab, don't descend here it is very unpleasant, I found out the hard way. The Climbers Traverse is a narrow but safe path running along the steep side of Bowfell, there are a couple of awkward looking places but there should be no problem if you take care.

Eventually you come to a fan of scree coming down from the right just before you get to the start of the path leading to The Band. I have suspected before that this is a way over to Three Tarns and today I was going to find out. After about twenty feet of scree a grassy ledge traverses the fell high above the band and eventually joins the wide eroded path coming up from Three Tarns.

I'm not sure I would recognise the junction of paths, it is quite indistinct even if it hadn't been quite as misty. As I descended towards Three Tarns I was for once able to see the tarns and how to get across to Crinkle Crags without getting lost, or at least without wandering around in the mist for half an hour.

The ridge of Crinkle Crags is very undulating, many small peaks having their own cairns and on a misty day they are difficult to recognise. I made sure that I got to every cairn, I think the one on the summit of Shelter Crags is the only one I hadn't visited before but in the poor visibility and increasing gloom I didn't really recognise any of them. The ones I did recognise were the actual summit cairns of Crinkle Crags but that is another very confusing summit.

I was convinced I knew the way down but I checked my map just in case, there are some ways off Crinkle Crags that you wouldn't want to try even in good weather. Off the summit and over the last Crinkle it was down hill all the way, and what a long way it was, it took me ninety minutes to get back to the car park.

After the easy path down to Red Tarn you turn left, the path isn't quite as easy but the reconstructed sections are not bad. The final descent to Oxendale from Brown How is a reconstructed path, made from quite small rocks, not much bigger than cobbles but which slope downwards. The rocks being wet were quite slippery and with sloping downwards it would have been awkward enough but by now it was almost dark, it was not the most enjoyable part of the day.

Finally down to Oxendale Beck and across the footbridge, there is the last mile to walk back to the Old Dungeon Ghyll hotel. Eight and a half hours is probably a bit too much for this time of year.

Andy Wallace 24th January 2004