Halls to Doddick via Sharp Edge 8th Jul 2006 - Photo Gallery

There is always a risk when arranging to meet people for a walk that really needs dry weather, especially a month in advance. It was dry when I met Andrew at the small car park at Threlkeld but it was cloudy and it had rained fairly recently; I drove through a light shower near Keswick. We set off in the direction of Blencathra, through a small wooded area where a well built footbridge and series of steps took us across Blease Gill and up the muddy bank on the other side. As you emerge from the trees Blencathra is all you can see ahead; you go through a gate and choose one of several ways to reach its summit.

We turned right to follow a path just above the intake wall until we reached another wooden gate at Gate Gill. Again you have a choice of routes; follow Gate Gill to Middle Tongue, follow the wall towards Scales Fell or take the middle path uphill after crossing the gill. This is the route to Hall's Fell; it is steep but not excessively so, although it is fairly consistent gradient all the way up the long ridge. At first you walk on grass, the path is obvious at this time of year a swathe of flattened grass through the lush bracken. After a short time the bracken gives way to the heather and the flattened grass gives way to to rocky outcrops and an eroded, stony path.

Blencathra imposes itself ahead; you can see Gate Gill running into a great steep-sided corrie, there is much more to this hill than you can see from the ridges. The heather becomes sparser and the path more rugged; although there are some slippery stones the ground is too rocky to become really eroded. There is a brief respite from climbing, a green shelf with a big cairn makes a good viewpoint of the main road below and Clough Head across the valley at the start of Helvellyn's range. At this stage I had to admit that I wasn't going to be warm enough in tee shirt and shorts; the cool breeze forced me to put on a lightweight windproof jacket.

The next section is the closest you get to a slog on this route, just a plain rocky path with stones set at a consistent gradient; just get your head down and keep putting one foot in foot of the other. Don't forget the the view though, there are parallel ridges and a high skyline; at first glance it all looks the same but each ridge is full of its own unique variations of shape and colour. The slog ends at a cairn in front of a rock outcrop where the path goes around to the right of the rocks. You don't have to follow the path, this is where the ridge starts and you can climb up the rock and keep to the crest as much as you dare.

Before climbing up on to the rock I had to put a proper jacket on, I was glad I had brought it with me because the breeze had become strong enough to be called windy. The rock is easy to climb when it is dry, the strata point upwards so you put your hands and feet safely anywhere, you have to take care when the rock is damp because it becomes greasy and slippery. There are three or four outcrops with grassy sections in between before you reach the proper ridge; although the path promises to miss the rock you have to get onto the ridge at some stage so you may as well get up as soon as possible.

As we got to this stage it was a surprise that the wind suddenly dropped; no excuse now not to keep to the crest of the ridge. There are some sections where you can more or less walk upright but most of the time you need to use your hands, especially if you stick as close to the crest as you can. The most awkward bits of climbing can be bypassed but there are places where you have to get up onto narrow, exposed outcrops. When the rock is dry it is excellent and quite easy scrambling but you must always keep hold on the exposed sections and I wouldn't recommend bringing pets or first-timers.

The rock goes all the way to the top; the skyline you see is Hall's Fell Top, the summit of Blencathra, making it one of the few climbs without any false summits. It is a bit of a sparse summit though after an exhilarating climb; a small stony plateau with an innocuous cairn and no triangulation column although the base indicates there should be one here. There is a wide path heading north towards Atkinson Pike but I prefer to walk across the middle of Blencathra's saddle; there is an unlikely tarn and some even more unlikely stone crosses laid into the grassy surface.

There isn't much white quartz rock to be seen on Blencathra but somebody has built a cross with it that Wainwright reckons is 10 feet wide by 16 feet tall. Its purpose as a memorial means that you wouldn't expect people to play with the stones and make them into other shapes.

Once you pass the cairn on Atkinson Pike you start to descend steeply, on grass at first but the surface soon becomes very eroded. Sharp Edge is now visible, it looks wild and rocky but the closer it gets the more intimidating it becomes. In actual fact the descent along the edge of Foule Crag is probably more awkward and demanding than the crossing of Sharp Edge. The large number of people climbing upwards and only the two of us going down suggests that we were doing it the more difficult way. The safest way downwards takes you into a small rocky gully; before you reach the bottom of it you have to traverse the rock, usually using your fifth point of contact, to reach the start of Sharp Edge.

There is a large outcrop of rock to get over or around as best you can, there is a steep drop on either side so you can't avoid going over some part of it. You can sit on the end of it looking down to the notch and the sloping slab that make Sharp Edge difficult; this is your last chance to turn round. There is only one way to cope with awkward places like this, if you look down while you are moving you will lose your balance; focussing on where you put your feet you have to ease yourself down to the notch. Once you are there you can allow yourself to look downwards on the right; Mountain Rescue teams refer to it as the usual gully for obvious reasons, don't forget to keep hold now.

You can walk across the notch, it isn't as knife-edged as it first appears; then you can climb up onto the slab. I am always nervous about the shiny part of the slab when descending; you have nothing really to hold onto whereas on the way up you would be holding on taking a different line. It didn't help that it started to rain as I was part way across the slab, fortunately it was only a few spots of rain and didn't last long; after my experience of the last two times I am never going onto Sharp Edge when there is any hint of dampness of the rocks. Once across the shiny part you can stand up and hold on to the upright rocks on your right hand side. The rest of Sharp Edge is just a matter of keeping to the crest, watching where you put your feet and keeping hold.

There is a knife edge to clamber over before you get to the easiest part of Sharp Edge; a flattened section that you can walk easily across, take photographs of each other and admire the view. After that it is soon finished, the apprehension and anticipation forgotten as you realise how much you enjoyed it. A quick discussion about the route results in us deciding that in view of the possibility of further rain neither of us was happy about going back up again. We got down to Scales Tarn and the water was a deep turquoise colour, very reminiscent of Low Water on Coniston without the mine workings.

Then we set off downwards, we were going to lose all the height we had gained but that is how it has to be if you want to spend all day on Blencathra. There are still plenty of people on the way up but just the two of us going down; after we turned the corner at Mousethwaite Comb we had to squeeze past the occupants of a 52-seater coach on the narrow path. Eventually we got down to the crossing of Scaley Beck, probably the most awkward manoeuvre of the day is required to get up the rock outcrop on the other side. This is Doddick Fell and there is a path going upwards, I wondered how long it would be before this steep green ascent might seem like not such a good idea.

It was a slog, so different to the ascent of Hall's Fell; we went upwards for quite a long way and were beginning to wonder if the path we were following was actually ever going to find the ridge. We did find the ridge of course and very attractive it looked, it was noticeable that the heather was in flower on one side of of the ridge but not on the other. The climb was not bad considering it was our second of the day; I was interested in the potential routes along Doddick Gill and Scaley Beck; Blencathra still has a lot more for me to discover about her.

The top of Doddick Fell is a series of rocky pinnacles, I would have scrambled up if I had a bit more energy. Once you get past the pinnacles you join a robustly constructed path that takes a zigzag route to Blencathra's plateau highway. The summit of Blencathra was still as unimpressive and still as busy as the first time we were there but this time we carried on along the highway towards Gategill Fell. From Gategill Fell we carried on to Knowe Crags, or is it the summit of Blease Fell, and took the easy way down.

The wide eroded path is eroded enough to have attracted the attention of http://www.FixTheFells.co.uk and this path certainly needs it, they need your support too. The journey home was very wet, we were just in time with the weather.

Andy Wallace 8th July 2006