If at first you don’t succeed, try try again right?! Video and blog below.

I had made quite a few attempts this year on summiting this mountain from Langdale, but been thwarted once by high winds and once by torrential rain and an ill-judged alternative route. So when I saw a winter forecast for a high pressure with little wind and clear skies I was all set for a third-time-lucky attempt.

I chose to stay in the Youth Hostel at Ambleside on the Friday night, and then arrived at New Dungeon Ghyll car park before 8am. I chose to approach this from Langdale, instead of the much more common starting point of Wasdale Head, simply due to the stressful drive in. I am not a fan of needlessly driving on narrow lanes with limited parking especially after driving the peninsula road across the southern Lake District. And you can forget asking about Honister Pass and Wrynose Pass as the alternative! For me, the driving is the riskiest part of the mountain journey and I like to keep things as simple as possible. So Langdale would do just fine!

It’s also one hell of a walk in – a flat but well made Cumbria Way takes you to a bridge and a fork in the path. Head left to begin the when-will-this-end climb up to Angle Tarn, and then up once again to Esk Hause, the meeting point of many paths. Even at that point, you’ve still got a long way to go and that’s before you even think about reversing it to return to your starting point. With shorter daylight hours, you need to get a shift on – well, you do if you have dinner to look forward to which stops being served at 8pm…

I honestly couldn’t believe my good fortune with the weather – such a contrast to the two previous attempts. It did mean that I could just enjoy it so much more as I had already done the hard navigation previously and knew the paths well. The slightly trickier, and much icier, section came next. A climb up to Ill Crag and Broad Crag (neither of which I summited) across very rocky ground, eventually to the slope south west which leads to the final rise to Scafell Pike. At that point, as you will see in the video, I put my crampons on as it was getting to the point where I was going too slow. When you have a deadline to be off the hill it certainly makes decisions a lot easier.

My target had been a 2pm summit – I managed this at 1:54 which I was super pleased with. I knew it would take me a long time to descend due to the bouldery ground I had just come across. Then there was the icy path down from Angle Tarn…Daylight died while I was in the fog and mist, so a murky finish on the Cumbria Way was the order of the day. Headtorch on, poles out, I just concentrated on bashing out the last few miles. I did notice I was beginning to stumble about quite a bit by the end. I had clocked just over 9.5 hours by the time I got back to the car. It was 6pm, so perfect timing to grab some dinner. But one last adventure remained…

Just as I unlocked my car, a young chap approached me and asked the way to Grasmere. I assumed he was driving so gave road directions. ‘How long to walk it?’ he asked – ‘hours’ I replied, and then said ‘hop in, I’ll give you a lift’. Turns out he had walked from Grasmere to New Dungeon Ghyll, setting off at 11am with a group who had turned out to be much slower than planned/expected. I laughed, these things happen sometimes and the best thing to do is try to get people safely out of trouble. I drove him to Grasmere, increasingly hungry, and then just managed to get to Ambleside and changed in time for last orders of food. Winter Quality Mountain Day 🙂