Sunday was the day of our climb up Scafell Pike, the second mountain of our three peak (in 24 months) challenge. Kev started his morning at 05:30 and with the lack of a 20p decided to start this morning with a rather cold shower, whilst I on the other hand, was fast asleep until Kev woke me at 07:00, I do love my ability to sleep in pretty much any condition sometimes.
The shop on the campsite opened at 08:00 but of course, as always, I was impatient and didn’t want to wait 15 minutes so we set off at 07:45 with nothing more than a few litres of water, four Tracker bars and a Kendal mint cake to keep us going; the diet of champions. The walk started off pretty much at sea level (I think it was around 35m) with a water crossing via some stepping stones. After the first water crossing the rest of the ascent was pretty much a non-stop uphill climb, not too steep, but it was definitely steep enough for my liking. The path up is rather uneven, lots of rocks sticking up at awkward angles just waiting for you to make a wrong move, the higher you get the rockier and more uneven the path becomes.
Once we got higher up the mountain (~800m+) the cloud started moving in around us and we began to feel a few drops of rain, it was nothing major though and we carried on without any problems. Once you get to the top of the last scramble there is a large cairn marking the way forwards, it was noticeably cold and windy at this point and there was even patches of snow lying around, incredible! We followed the now unrecognisable path up to the summit, we had made it to the top and how lucky we were to have made it up there during a gap in the traffic; at that moment in time we were the sole victors of the mountain, we alone had conquered her and for a few minutes we alone could now sit back and enjoy the views as a reward for our efforts thus far.
The original intention was to climb the pike, and then walk back to the pub in a circular walk via “the corridor” route on the way back, this sounded great but unfortunately a few wrong turns and a very bad decision later, our plan of a gentle descent turned into a potentially dangerous and painful experience for us both…
As the track log from my GPS shows, after we came back from the summit to the crossroads, we climbed the hill to the north, however, at this point we should’ve been going downhill in a more north-easterly direction heading for the gap or “corridor” (who’d have thought the name of the route would resemble the route itself) between the two hills/mountains there. Instead of sitting down and taking a good look at the OS map we decided to trust my GPS and started walking back towards the campsite but after failing to find the path we started going towards the edge of what I can only describe as a rather steep hill. In our wisdom and after my famous words “how bad can it be?” we started climbing down the side of this hill. We only realised how wrong we had been when it was too late; a climb back up now would probably be just as bad as continuing on down so we made a decision and had to stick to it and boy did we make the wrong one.
Kev’s knees were knackered and my feet had taken a beating but after many stops and a slow climb down we eventually made it to the bottom. After a well deserved rest we joined up with the path we should’ve been on the whole time and finally came to the pub, we sat down to enjoy one of the best drinks I’ve ever had and our first proper meal since the quality steak in a can from the night before.
So, would I do it all again if I could? Hell yes; the sense of achievement, the stunning views and the surreal lighting up on that mountain were more than enough to make up for our silly mistakes on the way down, the next time I climb Scafell Pike though, I might give the cliff route a miss.
