Slight Problem on Slight Side - Photo Gallery
The end of my Wasdale season for another year has to be closed off properly and today I have a companion, super fit Frank is the first person brave enough to accept the challenge of climbing Scafell twice in one walk. The weather is dreadful, it is raining heavily enough on the motorway but the rain in the Lake District is torrential. Parts of the road are flooded, water is flowing across many of the roads and the streams are full, with water lapping at the decks of the bridges.
By the time we reached the National Trust car park at Brackenclose it had stopped raining, or rather the rain had paused. Ypu leave the far end of the car park and turn left, shortly afterwards you cross the bridge over Lingmell Gill. There is an enormous amount of water in the gill and it is just about staying under the bridge as it hurls itself furiously towards Wastwater. We have to cross this gill at some stage, I am beginning to think of alternative routes in the event that the ford is too dangerous.
The rain keeps threatening to fall but it isn't cold so for the time being I'm walking without my jacket on. Its a good job my boots are waterproof, there is too much stream at the next footbridge and it is overflowing and running down down the path. The water in Lingmell Gill is white with rage and it is no surprise when we get to the start of the Brown Tongue ridge that the stepping stones are a few feet below the water level. Two streams converge here, the one coming down from Lingmell has white water, the water in the one coming down from Hollow Stones is distinctly brown.
There is no choice but to follow the bank of the right hand stream and hope to find somewhere to cross it higher up, this has to be before the stream narrows and steepens. About half way up the gill it separates into about four streams with islands of rock, stones and grass in between. It was possible to leap from one precarious foothold to another over the smaller torrents, using Frank's walking poles on a couple of occasions it was possible to keep my feet dry.
The view back towards Wastwater and beyond looks as though the weather is clearing up although by now the threat of rain had forced me to put my jacket back on. Once across the gill we had a steep climb up grass to reach the ridge of Brown Tongue where we found the original path, the walk upwards seemed much less of a slog than on the newer constructed path that everybody uses these days. We rejoined the reconstructed path just before it splits, left for Lingmell Col and right for Hollow Stones.
The climb up the eroded rocky path to Hollow Stones seems less tiring than usual, missing the long walk up the reconstructed path was a bonus. There is a lot of evidence of a vast amount of water coming off the hills, long ribbons of deposited vegetation suggest it has been very wet recently. By the time we reached the scree fan below Lords Rake it was still misty, by the time we had had a bite to eat there were encouraging signs that the mist might be clearing with glimpses of Wasdale and Mickledore.
The climb up the scree is not as bad as you might expect given the steepness of the climb, the warning notice about the fallen boulder has no mention of hundreds of tons of rock wall falling into Lords Rake. Mid way up the scree a three feet wide gully has been carved out by water for a length of twenty feet or so. Looking up the Rake from the bottom it looks as damp and misty and intimidating as I have come to expect, I can't remember a nice day in Lords Rake. The new rock fall has settled in the lower half of the Rake and getting up is not too bad and the rocks now seem quite stable.
The upper part of the Rake is as I remember it last year, steep and loose, small stones and soil with the final awkward climb to the boulder relying on larger stones embedded in the steep surface. The fallen boulder doesn't seem to have changed much this year but scrambling underneath it is a strange experience, not daring to touch it but it would take far more than that to dislodge it. You can't walk into Lords Rake without going all the way to the end can you, two more descents and two more ascents on a steep and eroded but obvious path, obvious apart from the second depression where I managed to lose it.
At the end of the Rake I always go back down to the boulder but Frank hasn't got this far for thirty years so he decided to climb up to Scafell from here. On the way down again I realised why I had lost the path on the way up, there has been something of a landslip. Part of the path isn't there anymore, there is a profusion of loose stones, greasy boulders and uprooted vegetation to get across. Once I got back to the boulder I didn't attempt to drop back down into the Rake but I took the short cut to the start of the West Wall Traverse. This short cut is now available as a result of the rock wall falling into the rake, you can see from here just how much it has changed.
The scramble along the West Wall Traverse is wet and it seems very green with a growth of wet weather vegetation combined with a lack of traffic to keep it clear. At the top of the traverse you meet Deep Gill, it plunges steeply downwards on the left, the huge solid rock face on the unclimbed side of Scafell Pinnacle across the gill seems to be within your reach. To the right is the bit of Deep Gill that you can scramble up, colourful rock slabs to clamber over but wetter than usual. As I got part way up I could see Frank's ghostly shadow at the top of the gill, when I got there he agreed that I had taken the better route.
As I climbed out of the top of the gill on to the grassy plateau of Scafell below Symonds Knott it was misty as usual, neither of us had to look at map or compass, we both know how to find the summit of Scafell. As we started to descend along the ridge towards Slight Side we got below the mist and it began to look as though the weather was improving. As we got to the plateau between Scafell and Slight Side the mist had gone, at least on this side of Scafell anyway, pity about the cold blustery wind. The summit of Slight Side is a fine rocky slab, you can scramble up from almost any direction to a real mountain top, it wasn't easy to stand at the summit in the wind.
As usual with Slight Side the way down isn't obvious, so we traversed around to the south side of the summit looking for clues as to where the path downwards might be. I did find the the path but in the mean time Frank had gone his own way and was out of sight. After waiting around for a while thinking he might find his way to me I decided he was experienced enough to find his own way down the hill. Frank knew the route I had planned so I decided to carry on traversing the lower slopes of Slight Side and at worst I would see him back at the car.
As it happened Frank had decided to reverse the route back to the car and we met in the middle, the lesson must be to agree what to do in the event of becoming separated before you go on to the hills. Heading towards the head of Eskdale over generally pathless sodden grass the way goes between the boulders and scree of Cam Spout Crag and the man-eating swamp of the Great Moss. Soon you can see the circle of room sized boulders known as Sampson's Stones, make a beeline for them avoiding the worst of the wetness as best you can.
Once you get to Sampson's Stones there is a faint path that will keep you out of the worst of the swamps and take you the the waterfall of Cam Spout. The series of high waterfalls usually has just a trickle of water but today the gap between the crags is full of white water. The stream at the bottom of the falls is fuller than usual but it is no real problem to get across before making the interesting climb up the rock by the side of the waterfall. From the top of the waterfall is an obvious path heading towards Mickledore, it isn't steep but my calf muscles always complain at this stage of this walk and it is always a relief to get to the bottom of Foxes Tarn gully.
The weather is quite good and for once I can see up the gully, and more importantly I suppose take some reasonable photographs of it. The gully is another fine scramble on a day of fine scrambles, once again the amount of water coming down over the rocks add an extra degree of interest. At the top of the gully the little corrie of Foxes Tarn is almost unexpected, a delightful little puddle of water surrounded by steep, high walls of scree. The tarn is probably double its normal width of about ten feet and it is overflowing around the dam of stones probably built by walkers to prevent the tarn from drying out completely.
A final climb up steep scree was easier for a while but now the hillside is reverting back to its original state, the hard work in constructing a path being undone as the scree overwhelms it. At last the climbing was done as we got the summit of Scafell for the second time today. The climbing is done but not the hard work, the descent via Green How takes an hour from the summit of Scafell back to the car park. It is a hard hour after a strenuous walk even if you stick to the path over grass avoiding the most unpleasant of eroded short cuts.
A fitting walk to end my summer season and the weather generally behaved itself, farewell Wasdale until next May.
Andy Wallace 18th September 2004