Short Walk to the High Street - Photo Gallery

The forecast for the hills is strong winds and snow but I had to scrape ice from my windscreen after a cold but quiet night so I wasn't sure what to expect when I got to the Lake District. Shortly after leaving the motorway at Shap there was snow on the ground and by the time I got to Mardale Head it was no surprise to see that it was snowing and the hills were white and covered by fast moving clouds. The water level in Haweswater is higher than I have ever seen it, the usual shortcut across to the footpath is under several feet of water and there are no signs of the drowned walls and tracks.

As you leave the car park you go through a gate and bear right along a path and over a couple of small footbridges before crossing the very wide footbridge across Mardale Beck. You then follow an eroding path that rises easily to the crest of The Rigg just above the tree-line where an old wall waits to guide you. The path following the wall up the ridge towards Rough Crag isn't quite as brave as the wall builders as it avoids the rockiest of the outcrops on the crest. As you reach the high ridge the wall disappears from sight but it is still there and you will come across it occasionally, I came across snow at this stage and the weather started to deteriorate.

For a while you are on fairly level ground but on the exposed ridge the wind was starting to make its presence felt and it started to snow properly. There were quite a lot of cars parked down below but nobody else was going my way for some reason. The pleasant scramble up the crest of the ridge to the summit of Rough Crag was all the more interesting for the covering of snow. On the easy rock scrambles the snow was good enough to kick into making it better than coming this way on a wet day.

By the time I reached the cairn at the top of Rough Crag the snow had stopped and the sun was threatening to break through the cloud. The ruggedness of the hills was well shown up in the snow and sunlight and for a short time there were interesting reflections on Blea Water. It felt wild, isolated and very wintry at Caspel Gate and the climb to High Street by Long Stile looked quite intimidating or interesting according to your appetite for a challenge. The climb upwards was not disappointing, there is no evident exposure if you don't look for it but I needed to think about where the hand and foot holds were in a couple of places where the rocky scramble was steepest.

It was almost disappointing to finish the scramble but there is still a bit of work to do, the snow was deeper the higher I got but it is an easy enough gradient. Just before I reached High Street plateau there was a more substantial snowfield to wade through and then the wind came off the summit. This was the area where the spindrift picked up on the large plateau was being deposited. The ice particles being driven by the strong wind reduced the visibility to not very much as well as stinging my eyes enough for me not to be able to look very far ahead.

At least when I reached the large cairn at the top of the ridge I knew where I was and whatever forward direction I took I would reach the summit wall at some point. The wind was strong enough to make walking difficult and I couldn't tell if the whiteout was purely driven snow or if there was some precipitation too. I decided that I didn't want to cope with this for a couple of hours and mentally plotted the quickest route downwards. You will excuse me for not finding the summit on this occasion but I was more concerned with staying on my feet.

I turned right to follow the summit wall in the direction of Straits of Riggindale as the wind came relentlessly over the top of the wall. On a couple of occasions the wind eased and I caught a glimpse of blue sky before the next wall of ice particles was driven across the plateau. There was a brief respite as I got to Straits of Riggindale but as I climbed towards the summit of Kidsty Pike the wind became stronger. There was no way that I was going to visit its cairn - it was too close to the edge for comfort as I had to drop to the ground to avoid being blown off my feet.

There is an easy broad ridge descending to Kidsty Howes and once I got out of the wind the sun came out and it was a pleasant walk in between the hail showers. Looking back the summits were clear but the clouds were still moving very quickly bringing in frequent squalls. The pattern of sunshine and hail showers was carried on all the way back to the car park, in one particularly heavy shower the hailstones were arranged into strangely regular parallel lines on the surface of the lake. Back at the car it was sleeting and the temperature was 3C, just one degree higher than when I arrived.

Andy Wallace 8th April 2006