Honister to Black Sail (return) - Photo Gallery

The weather hadn't decided whether it should be cold or wet, it wasn't cold enough to be frosty but I wasn't convinced it was going to be a dry day. It was one degree centigrade as I drove up the steep and winding Honister Pass road and I hoped that there was no re-frozen meltwater to deal with. The road was not bad and it looked like it was going to be a dry but grey day; although I had seen fragments of snow on the higher hills as I was driving through Borrowdale. I decided I had to repeat last week's planned walk to work out how I had managed to get sucked into the Great Gable Triangle and be thrown out on the wrong side of the hill.

This time I walked up the steep path to Grey Knotts, the first section has now been fully reconstructed although there are a few icy moments where you need to place your feet carefully. There is a rock step, a mini gully that also needs a big step up, as you pass behind a surprisingly exposed rock outcrop. After the initial steep climb the gradient eases as you walk up an uneven path that doubles as a stream in some places and consequently needs care getting across the ice. The ground is also frozen so the ice is easily bypassed if you don't want to do as I did and use the fence for support whilst making big steps over the iced-up rocks.

The fence goes all the way uphill and shortly before you get to the summit plateau there are a couple of step stiles to get you to the other side of the fence. The stiles seemed to be unnecessary at the time but there is a junction with another fence beyond which the ground seems to fall away quite sharply. Almost at the summit of the path there is another stile which you need to cross to reach the summit cairn which sits on the large rock outcrop on the left hand side of the fence. After climbing down from the summit you meet the fence again because it has made a left turn and you can just follow it all the way to Brandreth. I climbed over the fence get to the subsidiary summit, there is a good view of Wasdale from there.

Find the fence again and it will take you all the way to Brandreth, eyes right for good views of Buttermere and Crummock Water and a glimpse of Ennerdale. For some reason a new fence has been built all the way along the ridge and bundles of fence posts are lying around at the summit of Brandreth. It seems a futile exercise to put up a new fence, it isn't high enough to stop the few sheep from jumping over it and it doesn't even have an anti-personnel barbed wire strand like some other hills I could name.

It had been a grey day so far but now there were brief flurries of light snow, the flakes if you could call them that were barely larger than frost particles. I descended from the summit of Brandreth following the soon to be replaced iron fence posts to the stand-alone gate at Gillercombe Head. I walked down to the right towards Moses Trod that I could see; there a couple of grass trods if you can find them that pass either side of a marshy area that is too wet to completely freeze over. I found one of the faint paths and it joins Moses Trod close to a substantial stone shelter, only a few metres away but almost invisible from the path.

Moses Trod is obvious here as it contours around Stone Cove, across the River Liza and then rising up over a scree slope to a marshy area populated by a small collection of old iron fence posts. This is the portal to the Great Gable Triangle that I fell into last weekend, it was easy to see how I went wrong in the conditions but experience should have told me to be more careful. As it was, in reasonable visibility, I had trouble locating any kind of a path and just had to head towards Beck Head Tarn although part way down I did find a faint path that took me to the Ennerdale side of the tarn.

The path then becomes obvious again and in keeping to the contours is reasonably easy to walk on. After a while you get to a broad shoulder where the path disappears for a while, or maybe I just lose it, in the last of the rocks before you get to grass. This is Boat How that gives its name to the rugged Crags up on the left hand skyline. At this point you have turned the corner of Kirk Fell and you can see Black Sail Pass; I kept on walking and soon found the path a couple of metres higher up the slope. You start to descend a little and the path becomes wetter, icier today, as you get to the ford of Sail Beck.

Having crossed the beck there are signs of faint paths slanting upwards towards Black Sail Pass but I thought if I was climbing up steep grass anyway I may as well head straight upwards. The ground is good and the small boulders are avoidable but it is a bit of a slog; it was worth the effort however when I found myself on the path already part way up to Kirk Fell. This is a rugged and interesting climb that seems more exhilarating going upwards than coming down. The path isn't clear in places and early on I wondered if I had gone off in the wrong direction as I scrambled over the rocks; the sight of yet more fence posts told me I was on the right track.

After an enjoyable few minutes scrambling upwards the final rock step takes you up to the wide summit of Kirk Fell. You are not quite on the summit plateau yet but Kirk Fell is one of the broadest flat-topped hills I know and there is of course a line of fence posts to follow. As I was following the fence the weather came in, from being just a grey day it became misty and suddenly it felt much colder. The fence takes you to a cairn and you can see another fence going off to the left; you need to follow that one after visiting the summit shelter just a few metres ahead of you.

After leaving the summit and finding the first few fence posts they seem to disappear; if you keep going in the same direction you will find a couple that have fallen over. Carry on and you see why the fence has disappeared, it dips down towards Kirkfell Tarn - another small group of tarns with a single name. Keep following the fence even though it seems to be taking you away from the rising ground ahead, it makes a right turn and takes you unerringly to the north top of Kirk Fell. The mist had reduced the visibility to a few metres but navigation wasn't a problem, I just kept following the fence.

The fence goes all the way down to Beck Head Tarn and indeed goes across the middle of one of the tarns. It takes you the the start of the descent of Rib End but takes a too-direct line for comfort and there are cairns marking a safer way downwards. The descent is straightforward enough, the main problem is the number of loose stones and rocks caused by erosion. The loose stones were less of problem with them being frozen together but there were some ice covered rocks that needed to be bypassed. As I was most of the way down I heard voices and the tinkling sound of sliding stones, I could see three walkers coming down from Great Gable by one of the scree runs, I don't think anyone does that on purpose.

I was going to be pressed for time if I was going to get back to the car before it went dark but I decided I had just enough time to climb Great Gable, I would have been disappointed otherwise. This is a favourite climb, steep and rocky with great views on a good day, although the light covering of snow would make it a little bit more interesting. I would normally climb directly up the rocks whether I was on the path or not but the snow has made some of the rocks slippery. I don't want to get into trouble at this time of day alone on Great Gable so I'm cairn spotting to find the safest route upwards.

There are cairns at regular intervals but some of them take a bit of finding in the fading light and with the snow camouflaging them anyway. It took a bit longer than normal but I got up without any drama and for the second weekend running I had the summit of Great Gable all to myself. All I had to do now was get down; it was definitely icier than last weekend and the visibility was just as bad. Having got the confidence from last week of knowing where the descent was I headed off to the right and found the cairns I was expecting to see.

This is another interesting path in good conditions but trickier with a bit on snow and ice. I was taking things very carefully because you don't have to fall very far to hurt yourself and in the event of a problem I was definitely on my own. The stony path is steep enough but then you have the outcrop where you have to scramble a little bit, I couldn't trust any of the rocks not to be slippery so my fifth point of contact was used quite a lot. Just as I got to the bottom of the scramble the mist lifted enough for me to see Green Gable, that is a very red footpath.

Having got down to Windy Gap I climbed the red footpath to the summit of Green Gable and followed the well cairned footpath downwards. The light cover of snow made it even more difficult to see the path going off to the left although I suppose if I got too far I wasn't that much out of my way. In the event I left the main path too early and walked across grass in the direction of Gillercombe Head until I came across the obvious cairned footpath. From Gillercomb Head I put on as much of a spurt as I could to rejoin Moses Trod on its way back to Honister Pass, it was quite dark by the time I got back to the car.

Andy Wallace 7th January 2006