Pillar and the Jets - Photo Gallery
What a wonderful day, I don't believe I have ever seen such good weather, clear blue sky and calm but not too warm. I left the car at the large parking area at Wasdale Head and walked back down the road by the side of Wastwater to the small car park at Ovebeck Bridge.
Go through the car park and through the bracken to the bottom of the green path alongside a fence that takes you unmistakably to Yewbarrow. Climbing this steep green path doesn't get any easier no matter how many times I do it, although there are signs of wear now that could make it more difficult in future. As the fence ends a wall starts and shortly afterwards a stile enables you to cross the wall, time for a breather now that the climbing is over for a while.
Follow the path up the valley and where it splits take the higher route heading towards Dropping Crag. Before you reach the crag itself the path changes direction so that you are going upwards in small zig zags. The zig zags end when the path becomes stony and after you walk past a rock wall on your left you can suddenly see the steep climb up to the skyline.
At the top of the first section of the path you should come to a cairn although it seems to have been destroyed recently. You are level with the top of Dropping Crag and you can see a short stone wall on the other side of a scree gully. At this point you should cross the top of the gully if you want the relatively easier climb or carry on upwards over rock for a more adventurous scramble. In today's dry conditions I went for the scramble, it shouldn't cause Paul too many problems even though he isn't an experienced scrambler.
After the excellent clamber over rocks you can rejoin the path. We continued upwards in a small eroded gully, although it is possible to climb up through the heather at the side of the gully which was what Paul decided to do. The reward for all of this hard work is that when you get to the top of the gully you suddenly come across a notch in the rocks of Bell Rib and you have a spectacular uninterrupted view down to Wastwater. I did think about scrambling up the rocks on the right to get up onto the very end of Bell Rib but the exposure was a bit too much for me and I wasn't confident of being able to get down again.
We walked over the top of Bell Rib where you have to scramble over rocks to get down to the crest of Great Door, a great notch in the rock which is visible from the valley floor. Then you still have some work to to the get to the cairn at the southern end of the summit plateau. Yewbarrow is surprisingly wide and flat and there is quite a long walk before you get to the summit and then to the cairn at the northern end of the ridge. The views today are absolutely fantastic, those of Great Gable, the Scafell Group and Red Pike being especially good.
Then the descent to Dore Head down Stirrup Crag, for me an exciting and exhilarating scramble, for Paul it was a nervous five points of contact struggle.
The excitement is over for a while once you get to Dore Head, navigation isn't a problem today as the way to Red Pike is clear and the path is obvious. It is a relatively straightforward walk to the ridge of Red Pike but the views of Gable and the Scafells are out of the ordinary today. On reaching the ridge you have to turn left to reach the summit cairn, easy to see today but easily missed in poor visibility.
The walk along the ridge of Red Pike is a revelation, I have never had a view from here, it has always been misty before. Gable and the Scafells continue to catch the eye but Red Pike has its fair share of crags and pinnacles just below the edge of the ridge. At the col between Red Pike and Scoat Fell it is still calm and warm, perfect conditions for walking.
From the col make a beeline for where the summit of Scoat Fell should be, there is no path but is a fairly easy walk over grass initially and then boulders higher up the fell. The summit wall becomes visible after a while and the cairn on the wall tells you exactly where you are. Don't try this technique in mist - it won't work, you will need a compass and know how to use it.
As we got closer to the wall the wind got up and by the time we got to the summit was too strong for Paul to want to go across to Steeple. We followed the wall in the direction of Pillar and the strength of the wind made it very awkward to hop over the boulders near to the end of the summit wall.
The walk over to Black Crag and down to Wind Gap was also made quite uncomfortable by the wind, the gusts were quite capable of knocking me off my feet. From Wind Gap you climb the eroded rocky path to Pillar, a pleasant clamber over boulders and rock made quite awkward by the strong wind. I intended going down by the High Level Route but with the wind being so strong I decided for Paul's sake to walk down the easier ridge route to Black Sail Pass.
In this part of the Lake District I am used to seeing a couple of RAF jets flying through the mountains but at the summit of Pillar a formation of five flew overhead. Where was my camera at the time? No chance of photographing them but a minute later another formation flew overhead and well I just about got some of them.
The walk down the ridge is quite straightforward although there are some rockier sections that need a bit of care. The views again were some that I hadn't seen before with Gable and the Scafells still prominent but Pillar has many attractive crags and pinnacles on its Ennerdale flank that just can't be seen from the High Level Route.
You shouldn't underestimate how big a mountain Pillar is, it took us two hours to get back to the car park from the summit of Pillar and as Paul observed I was really motoring.
Andy Wallace 13th September 2003