Yvan Seth's Hole in the Internet

Café Scafell

It had been a fairly wet and windy night, and the wet continued into the morning. So we didn't venture from our tents until about 10:00, when the rain stopped. I warmed up some water using the little meth burner stove, so we had warm "milk" with our muesli. My aim for the day was to cross over the tops of Scafell Peak and Scafell Pike, but we had a problem: low water. Luckily there is a lot of water around the Lake District! We soon found a clear-running stream and filled our water bladders (adding sterilisation tablets just in case.) We were ready for ascent.

Wild water source

Our path took us up to Slight Side, the little peak at the end of Scafell's long southern wing. A steep but steady walk. Unfortunately we found ourselves gradually walking up into a fog layer. We hoped the fog would pass, alas it never did. We stopped for some sustenance above Horn Crag, a particularly strange craggy landscape in the fog. Up here we noticed that our O2 mobile reception was full strength, as opposed to zero-strength in Eskdale. I gave in to temptation and posted a misty photo of Kat, Yaël, and a sheep to Facebook from my iPhone. I'm glad to say this was the only time I submitted to such geeky urges during our trek!

After our short break we continued upward via Long Green, a stony gradual slope that could have been at any altitude given that objects 50m ahead were just hazy shapes. I was following a compass bearing along this route, and once set my sight on a distinctive rock up ahead only to have it begin to move. A sheep! In time we made it to the stony top of Scafell Peak.

Long Green in Cloud

Once at the peak I promptly prepared to make some espresso! This probably greatly amused a couple of other walkers who crossed over while we were up there. It was all a bit surreal with the fog though, and never seeing the view meant we never really got a feel for where we were.

Café Scafell!

Espresso had, we made our way to the descent to Mickledore via Foxes Tarn. This descent was much wetter and more technical than expected. At a couple of points we had to take our packs off to negotiate particularly tricky groups of boulders and drops. The scenery was beautiful though, so it was well worth the difficulty. At one point we even got a clearish view down to Great Moss, which gave a feeling for our height. Alas, we were below the 800m mark by this point. Foxes gully took us down to the eastern slope of Mickledore, the pass joining Scafell Peak and Pike. My intention had been to continue up to Scafell Pike (England's highest point) from here, but the consensus seemed to be that we should head on to Wasdale and find the campsite. Scafell Pike is waiting for me next time! (It is 13 metres higher than Scafell Peak.)

Foxes Gully

The climb up to Mickledore from the bottom of Foxes Gully is steep but firm and easy to navigate. At the top you'll find a mountain rescue shelter box. If you head to the right of this you'll be on the path up to Scafell Pike, we headed to the left and the decent down to Wasdale. This was probably the nastiest decent of our trip! A steep, narrow, damp, rocky crevice. Very hard going, descending very loose scree at times. I wouldn't want to pass this way again, especially with heavy packs, because I felt I was altering the environment far too much.

Decent from Mickledore

In time the steep and loose decent flattens out to a shallower grassy one, complete with a fairly distinct path. I have a feeling we somehow missed the proper path somewhere though, as we got to a point where we had to cross a steep-sided gill and found a paved path on the other side. This took us down towards the floor of Wasdale, where we turned right where we should have kept straight (I saw tents in the distance, but picked the wrong campsite to head towards - the OS and Harvey's maps don't show which one is the National Trust one.) A short trek down towards Wastwater gets us to our campsite.

Wastwater

It had been a rather good day all told. It was a bit of a pity that our whole time above about 800m had been cloaked in cloud, though that in itself provided for a unique experience of the Scafell scenery. In the end we'd only covered just over 11km, but this included nearly 1km of ascent, and well over 1km of decent (and as far as I'm concerned decent with packs is much harder than ascent, but I have disproportionately meaty quads, hams, and calves.)