Sticks and Dodds - Photo Gallery

Today it seems a lot milder than when I was at Stanah two days ago, four degrees centigrade and no wind chill. I walked up Stanah Lane to pick up the Sticks Pass path, a steep green and occasionally icy fell side. As I quickly gained height the view over to Skiddaw was good at valley level but the tops were ominously obscured by thick mist.

The steepness of the path eases as you reach a ruined building perched above the steep fell side, too small to be a sheepfold and if it used to be someone's house or shelter they would have had a great view as far as Bassenthwaite Lake. As the view behind improved, the view ahead worsened with the snow covered fell tops being shrouded in mist. The snow line started as the gradient eased further, just one more slight climb and it was level walking from then on.

Into the snow and the mist, I still find a child like fascination in being the first to walk through fresh snow, only a fox had beaten me to it, the dog like tracks in the snow can't have been made long ago. By the time I reached Sticks Pass the conditions had really deteriorated, it was misty and cold, no visibility and plenty of wind chill, at least somebody has put a stick back into the cairn at the top of Sticks Pass.

I turned left up the path leading to Stybarrow Dodd, at first the snow had made the line of the path more obvious than usual but after a while the path disappeared completely. Every few yards I kicked up some snow to make a mini cairn in the event that I had to retrace my steps, I was almost concerned about being lost for a couple of minutes until I found the path again. Having found the path I knew that it would bypass the summit so I headed across the rising ground and used my cairn detectors to find the summit. Last time I was here the upright stone in the cairn had a memorial to a young man who had died but who had loved these hills, it is iced over today but I feel it in spirit.

Just for the hell of it I decided to try and find the shelter that I know is nearby, kicking snow cairns as I went I found the remains of the wall containing the shelter, don't try this yourselves – it–s a scary place in this visibility. I retraced my steps to the summit cairn and rejoined the path, the snow is bit deeper here and strangely there are more fox tracks going my way. At the bottom of the shallow descent there are two paths, I follow the fox taking the left fork. The path to the summit of Watson's Dodd is usually very wet but one of the joys of walking in winter is that some horrible footpaths are really OK.

From the summit cairn on Watson's Dodd I had to take a compass bearing to find my direction to Great Dodd but I soon came across the path and yet more fox tracks. I was just beginning to think how alone I was when I came across some people tracks, they had obviously decided to bypass Watson's Dodd. I even came across a people, why do some people complain about the weather and the view, this is what the fells are really like, this is what makes it real.

I stopped at the shelter near to Great Dodd summit to take a bearing, it started to snow while I was there, small sharp particles of ice stinging my face. I made my way to the summit cairn and the visibility was at its worst and found another couple of walkers. I had to use my compass for a while until I found the path, the wind chill was at its worst, biting my face and chilling my fingers. Suddenly the snow line was passed, the wind dropped and fingers painfully came back to life as the small summit of Calfhow Pike came into view.

When I was at the top of Calfhow Pike the mist was playing games, providing strange viewing windows to give a peep show of the valley below and the fells beyond. The path towards Clough Head is now obvious, not quite fully frozen but sound enough to avoid the usual detours. Clough Head is a surprisingly large fell and it felt like quite a slog before I reached the summit with its neat but ineffective wind shelter with attached Ordnance Survey column.

Now for the real challenge, find Fisher's Wife's Rake, if I can locate Jim's Fold then the rake will be easy to find. I set of in a south south west direction over grass occasionally finding a faint path until I met a slightly more obvious path that I followed to the right for a short way until I reached a cairn at the top of a path. I was reasonably certain that this wasn't the rake and I followed the path back over the fell to try and find a sheepfold but after five minutes I was convinced that this wasn't the right path.

At least the mist had cleared around me and I continued southwards along a faint path until I found some ancient remains of something that might have been a small sheepfold. It was too close to Calfhow Pike and when checking the map against the landscape that I could see I decided that I knew which way to go. I eventually reached the head of Sandbead Gill, a spectacular and wild place, with hindsight I think I also found the top of Fisher's Wife's Rake but I really wanted to find Jim's Fold, just to be sure.

I followed a path and ended up on what Wainwright calls a “sporting” path, narrow and slippery high up on the steep fell side, I decided that this was going in the wrong direction so I climbed up the fell that was not meant to be climbed at this place. I found another path and ended up on a similarly sporting path and made an similarly unnerving climb up the steep, slippery, bouldery grass and came to the conclusion that I was going to end up at the cairn where I first started. So it came to pass, I had failed again to find a path so obvious that I can see it from across the valley and I settled for the steep descent over scree.

When I reached the intake wall I walked around the base of the crags trying to locate the bottom of Fisher's Wife's Rake but I couldn't really be sure. Continuing alongside the wall I came to Bram Crag quarry and made my way down to the road, for as pleasant a walk on tarmac as you could find along St. John's in the Vale back to Stanah.

I am trying not to get obsessed about Fisher's Wife's Rake but this is the third time that I have failed to find it.

Andy Wallace 1st February 2003