Yesterday, 18th Feb, I finally got round to making some progress on the Helvellyn course I advertising in the near future. I started this by attending a workshop last year on leading others on Striding Edge as a Mountain Leader, not as a Mountaineering Instructor. Leading a Grade 1 scramble is right at the borderline of what an ML Summer should ideally be working in terms of technical difficulty. The workshop with Graham Uney highlighted other things to consider, including interesting different routes to take clients on apart from the edge in bad weather.

So I put a huge circuit together to tackle some of the additional challenges he mentioned. Starting in Wythburn car park in Thirlmere, I hiked up Birkside Gill, summiting Nethermost and Dollywagon Pike and descended in Grisedale Tarn.

Following this, I headed east down to Glenridding, then back up to the Youth Hostel at the old mining works north of Helvellyn. These are pictured below and make a good starting point for a hike to Red Tarn and the Edges.

Graham had pointed out a feature called the chimney on the OS map, I relic of the industrial days on these mountains. It makes a really cool path up Raise that despite not being marked as such is obviously quite well trodden. Picture below.

Carrying on up this, you can take a bearing onto the summit ridge of Raise. In winter conditions there’s a ski tow up here which I find amusing – there must only be about 10 days of ski conditions up here every year! Again, a relic of bygone reliable conditions and a stark reminder of climate change.

The wind really picked up as I gained the ridge line, and I concentrated on just ticking off the checkpoints on my map. By that time I had been on the go for nearly 8 hours. Certainly not a good time to make a simple navigational error as night was approaching.

There was enough good daylight left to make out the old snow on the north eastern aspects of Helvellyn and the current patch at the top of Swirral Edge. After this I was able to head back down Birkside Gill and back to the car. A decent quality mountain day, clocking in at 9.5 hours and 22km.