The Middle of Blencathra - Photo Gallery
It was misty all the way on the drive to the Lake District, although by the time I reached the car park on Blease Road in Threlkeld there were some signs that it was beginning to clear. I had planned to add another couple of routes to my Blencathra collection and see what else looked good when I got to the summit. As I started walking it looked like the mist was clearing from Blencathra ahead but it was still fairly dense in the valley. The footpath out of the car park takes you through a small wood where an elegantly built wooden footbridge and staircase take you across Blease Gill and up the muddy bank of the stream.
Once you get past the trees you go through a gate and you are at a crossroads of paths at the base of Blencathra. I turned right and followed the path just above a wall through a couple of fields until I reached Gate Gill. I had often wondered what was up the valley and I was slightly apprehensive about finding a viable route on Middle Tongue. The remains of a stone hut guard the entrance to the gill, this is the first stone-built building I have seen that incorporates bricks into the structure to make the corners nice and tidy.
After a short rise you are in the valley, there is no stream bank as such because the fellsides come down on either side and meet at the bed of the gill. Sometimes the ruins of old mine workings add interest to the natural structure but not here, it is the most unkempt ruin with untidy, ugly walls that seem to be trying to prevent the loose sides of the fell from overwhelming the stream. Whatever purpose the walls were built for they failed a long time ago and the stream has washed away lots of loose material down to the bare rock.
There is a vague path running parallel to the gill that just about hangs on to the steep, loose material. Frequently it is a puzzle to find a way past rock outcrops, eroded walls and other obstacles without falling several feet down into the rock bottomed stream bed. Then suddenly after you pass the entrances to two old mine levels all the detritus disappears and you are in a remote and unspoiled mountain valley with Middle Tongue ahead in the haze. There still isn't much to walk on but the vegetation hasn't been stripped away from the fragile fell so it is less of a puzzle to follow the faint path.
Just as I was thinking I was past the industrial area I came across a curious little area, a large rock outcrop with a narrow gap leading through to a green area beyond. The gap was too narrow to squeeze through and on my side of it a rusty rail track poked out through the ground, was this the head of an old mineral line? I had to scramble up the edge of the outcrop, it would be an interesting place to explore one day, and then I really was in the unspoiled part of the gill. Middle Tongue ahead looked fairly benign but the heather was going to be hard work, it just looked too easy to be true.
After making my way past another rocky obstacle it became obvious that I should be on the other side of the gill so I retraced my steps to an easy crossing place. I still couldn't believe how straightforward Middle Tongue looked but these untrodden places can be misleading in their difficulty. This is a lovely place, in the middle of Blencathra and completely unspoiled, it was hazy ahead but above the skyline the sky was very blue. I crossed the gill at the obvious foot of Middle Tongue and it was no real surprise to find a faint path going up through the heather.
The climb is much more strenuous than it looks, the ground is good but the steepness of it is disguised by the vegetation, you have to make big steps. By now I was out of the mist and the sun was shining, I became very warm and had to remove one of my two teeshirts and my jacket. The path through the heather seems to go off in the wrong direction but I suspect it finds the best route upwards whereas I took the most direct but very steep route. Mostly the ground is good, but there are greasy boulders to get around and there are some dirty fingernail moments, all hands are required for a real four limbs scramble up a couple of areas of loose exposed soil and shale.
The steepness is unrelenting, it's a good job the heather is so well rooted because it provides the only handholds. The view ahead is phenomenal, I really am on my own in the middle of big, rugged mountains; on one of my many rests I looked back and it looks like an amazing cloud inversion is forming. There were plenty of good reasons to stop and take photographs, any resemblance to taking a rest was purely coincidental. Still it looked ahead like a very reasonable gradient but my legs and my lungs were telling me I was working hard.
The heather got left behind and Middle Tongue looked like a straightforward grassy ascent, I still don't understand how it looked so simple but it felt so hard. Eventually I reached the skyline, the ridge of Blencathra, on looking back to see where I had come from the ground just fell away. I can't remember the last time my legs felt like jelly after a simple grassy slope, maybe it was the steepness at the start of Middle Tongue that got me but I decided to save my other planned route for another day. By this time the mist had caught up with me and I had to put my jacket back on, does it still count as an inversion if you are in the mist? I walked along the ridge past the summit and followed the broad path, missing the summit of Atkinson Pike, and the ground suddenly started to fall away.
A steep eroded descent takes you in the direction of Sharp Edge which I could see clearly, it was strangely quiet. The descent is steep and eroded and some of the rocky gully-like sections were quite damp, I was hoping that the rocks on Sharp Edge were dry. I got to the start of Sharp Edge without too much trouble and at the notch I waited for another walker to cross the tilted slab at the crux of the rocky ridge. He thanked me for letting him pass and he mentioned that the rocks were slippery in places but I stepped up onto the slab anyway. There was water on the slab, I tested it with a boot and it was slippery so I started to shuffle across on my fifth point of contact.
This particular slab has a steep drop on the left into the usual gully, the place that walkers usually fall in to. I got part way across and realised I would rather not go any further, unfortunately because of the position I was in I couldn't turn round without part of me hanging over the edge. Having realised how bad the conditions were for descending this way I made my way slowly and inelegantly along the driest rock I could find with only fingerholds in the uneven surface of the slab for support. Once I got far enough down to see the path below the ridge I slid and shuffled my way nervously down to it, there isn't a lot to hang on to. Getting down is far harder than going up; on the way up you can usually hang on if you slip, on the way down if you slip you are gone.
It's a long time since I used the path on Sharp Edge, not since my first time here when I had a baptism of snow on this most exposed of easy options. I had intended to climb back up the edge but I decided to save that pleasure for another occasion. I walked down to Scales Tarn which was still in a semi-solid state with being in the shade, and walked the easy way back up to the ridge. So much for this being easy, the mud is always at its worst when it has recently thawed being much more liquefied with trapped water that hasn't been able to evaporate. It was a long slog up the grassy slope when the mud got too difficult to walk on, I would much rather have climbed up Sharp Edge.
I eventually got back on to the summit ridge of Blencathra and it was awesome, the sun was shining brightly in a cloudless blue sky and there was an amazing cloud inversion. For as far as I could see a layer of thick mist covered the surrounding low ground. Skiddaw stood out, illuminated by the sun and skirted by mist, vapour trails made intriguing patterns in the blue sky and the Helvellyn range stood above the mist but was also capped by clouds. I just couldn't stop taking photographs, almost every one the same view but what a view!
I walked along the ridge to the summit of Gategill Fell and just before the top platform of rock that a cairn sits on I noticed a small rocky gully. The gully is the start of the descent, the steep rock is covered with loose stones that get more numerous and slippery as you go down. I can only describe it as a scree-filled gully because that is what it is - as I saw later looking back from Knott Halloo. I tried to keep on the slightly better ground at the side of the gully before crossing the loose stony ground to get on the path to Knott Halloo. Looking back at Gategill Fell it seems very intimidating and almost impossible, perhaps it was just as well it was misty when I ascended this way.
The ridge to Knott Halloo is no Striding Edge but it is a pleasant green airy ridge where you are surrounded by Blencathra on three sides. The cloud inversion makes the view ahead very big, the only things that can be seen are the blinding sun and Clough Head, although the clouds beyond it give away the position of Helvellyn. The other thing I can see is Middle Tongue, it looks simple enough, not too steep and somehow it only seems to get halfway up to the ridge. From the rocky knoll of Knott Halloo it is downhill all the way, there is a steep and eroded stony path at first, then a less eroded rough path through heather. At a junction with another path following the contours I took the right turn and it quickly started to go downhill as a much smaller path through the heather.
As you meet another transverse path it all goes a bit green and confused and this is where I met the mist, inevitably I lost the path and I was walking down steep grass without any evidence of a path. There were no landmarks to see in the mist but I heard the sound of Blease Gill and followed a sheep trod towards the sound. I had no intention of trying to walk down the gill but at least keeping parallel to it I would end up at the right place. Eventually I reached a more substantial sheep trod going off to the left, I followed it for a while until I arrived at the corner of the fence and ruined wall, the path downwards is very obvious from here back to the woods and the car park.
Andy Wallace 4th February 2006