12/13 Winter Season Part 1 - Crinkle Crags & Wardsstone

I've been out there a lot over 2012 including a few brief winter adventures (Including my first grade I winter gulley (Cust's Gulley, Great End)), and my first big wall climb (C Ordinary on Dow Crag). But I've had little motivation to write about it. I have a free evening an I've been inspired by the weekends adventure so thought I would write a little bit about My winter season in the lakes.

Crinkle Crags (Lake District) - 01.12.12

The Approach

Our New Friend

As soon as the snow fell in the lakes we were up there. The last week of November there was a few days of snow and we managed to get up to the Langdales for a stunning Alpine day. After parking up on the frozen ice rink car park at The Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel, Myself, Elliott Standfield and Sam Richardson set off on a route that we took on a rainy summers day about 6 months earlier. On that day in summer, we came across two walkers with all new expensive gear and an old out of date OS map. They were a bit confused as to where they were and ignored our advice and continued in the opposite direction to where they said they were heading so on our approach we had a joke about them still wondering about Bow Fell and we might bump into them again.

Alpine

Although the Valley was a bit chilly and frozen, the snow started about 400-600m depending on the area. We wondered up to the Crinkle Crags and found knee and even waist deep drifts in some gulleys. On this particular day I was glad of the snow as myself and Ellott had mistakenly had a heavy night so I had to periodically lie face down in the snow to soothe my head.

Our route took us up Great Knott and over the Crinkle Crags. The bad step was as interesting as usual made a little tricky with the snow in all the decent hand grips so used an axe for assistance and practised my camming technique. When we sat down to have something to eat, we were joined by Crow who seemed to have a taste for Maryland Cookies! We continued over to Bow Fell, missing out the path and scrambling up the crags through some deep drifts in the small gulleys. The Great Slab on Bow fell look stunning covered in the snow an frost though for some reason we didn't take a photo.

The fresh snow mean that this was going to be a walking day and we didn't require crampons, it would be many weeks before there was any kind of condition of climbing, but it was worth the walk for the spectacular views of the surrounding mountains in Bluebird Alpine conditions. We didn't complete our full route as the deep powder made it hard going and this was something we hadn't encountered since February so with tired legs we decided to miss out Esk Pike and head down the frozen path via Angle Tarn to the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel for a well earned Pint!

Angle Tarn

Wards Stone (Trough of Bowland) - 08.12.12

The Following week, Myself, Elliott Standfield, Aaron Gow and Karl Norwood headed to the Trough of Bowland just above Abbeystead to walk my annual slog that usually gets my ready for winter. The route took us from Jubilee Tower along the main road and down into a small Village marked on the map as Tarnbrook, where we met some turkeys, we guessed they weren't going to be around much longer as it was fast approaching Christmas.

We acsended up Tarnbrook fell which is the first hard slog, its not too steep, just long and the frozen path made moving uphill difficult. When we hit the fence on the top of the moore came the next slog over heather and frozen bogs. We Finally reached the kilometre wide summit plateau and stopped for a quick brew while we his from the wind behind a frozen rock.

We then made our decent from Ward's Stone rock to grit fell, again the frozen path made this a 'fun' route. We passed the the lonley conifer that, one year when I passed it, was covered in tinsel; and by this time the weather had closed in as is usually does and the sleet began.

As we descended from the summit of Grit fell, the wet snow turned to rain and the miserable damp atmosphere of the slog began to take its strain. I was happy to see Jubilee Tower and the cars appear through the dense wet cloud as this mean an end to the 10 mile walk, the warmth of a weak car heater and inevitably, a warm pub.