Scafell Pike

It’s a long drive from Fort William to the Lake District, and an uncomfortable one if you walked up and down Ben Nevis earlier that day. We were rewarded by a beautiful drive along the shore of Wast Water to our campsite in Wasdale Head. We arrived late, as expected, and quickly set up camp before bobbing into the pub for a few drinks and a brief chat about the plan for Scafell Pike the following day. We learned from Ben Nevis and planned a later start, aiming for 10am or thereabouts.

The 10am start didn’t happen because I stupidly locked my friend’s car keys in the boot of his car (prompting a rather depressing 2-3 hour interlude during which the breakdown recovery service had to make a 100-mile round trip to find us and break into the car). In actual fact it was more like 1pm when we started.

During our wait, the campsite owner told us about the upcoming fell-running race up Lingmell which was just a few hundred metres from our tent. According to him, the record holder was able to run to the peak (807m) and back down in just 46 minutes! This put my fitness and mild discomfort on Ben Nevis into some perspective.

I wasn’t looking forward to Scafell Pike. My brother had had a bad weather experience there a few years ago, and the weather now wasn’t looking very good at all, with constant showers and thick clouds rolling down the valley. In addition, some walkers we met on Ben Nevis had told us things like “ooh now that is definitely tougher.”

Despite a lovely gentle beginning, the path we had chosen quickly took a steep turn. By now the rain showers had stopped and we were in very hot sunshine, just in time for the steep climb. We were pacing ourselves better though – we didn’t stop much on this initial climb and we maintained a slower pace. This worked better and we stopped half way up for some food.

Wast Water seen from Scafell Pike

One of our group of three seemed more interested than me in the time it took him to ‘bag’ the peak, so on he went. This left my other friend and I to enjoy the walk and the surrounding views at our own slightly slower pace, one at which we were able to conduct a lengthy conversation about self-employment and tax! As boring as this sounds, I found this the most enjoyable part of the walk. It served to show me that the company you choose is almost as important as having boots that fit properly. It gave me motivation to continue when it got difficult, and distracted me enough from the painful sections of the walk.

At about the three-quarters mark on our ascent, some fairly heavy cloud that had literally been chasing us for 15 minutes finally caught up with us and reduced visibility to less than 20 metres. Luckily it’s a well marked path on Scafell Pike and we were able to find the summit easily but some advice my friend had been given proved valuable. The campsite owner had told my friend that there are many routes on and off the summit, and that paths were strewn all across it. We were warned to take great care to remember which route we came up in case visibility became an issue.

This time on the summit we did intermittently get views, but the weather changed so quickly.

A view from the summit through the clouds

Within minutes the cloud had surrounded us again and we couldn’t see more than 10 metres in front of us.

No view

We started to make a move once the cloud surrounded us. We had heeded the advice from the campsite owner, making mental notes of unusual rocks on the plateau. We managed to find our path easily enough but came into a little bit of confusion as soon as we started descending. There was a fork in the path – I was fairly certain of the one we should take, and one friend agreed with me. One disagreed. We chose to follow my path for a short distance until I said I wasn’t as sure as I had been earlier, so we stopped to talk about it. The other path was still fairly close to us and just about visible from where we were. We each said what we thought we should do. I suggested we stop for a few minutes to see if the cloud lifted a bit. One friend said we should go back to the other path. My other friend suggested we have a quick look around to see if anything jogged our memories. I was in favour of staying put, in case we actually did end up getting lost. If anything, my view was that staying put was the right thing to do, but if we were to move anywhere we should move backwards rather than forwards so that we at least stayed on ground we had already covered.

This prompted a discussion later in the walk about mountain leader training and making decisions in the mountains. One of my friends said (these may not be his exact words), “well, the way I see it, there are three of us. If one of us thinks it’s one way but the other two think it’s that way, then we go that way. Majority rules. It’s common sense.”

I disagreed at the time and I still do now. At the time I remember thinking “no, that’s not common sense, that’s common stupidity.” I think this is too strong a term, and I certainly mean no disrespect to my friend, but what I meant was that it’s wrong to just rely on the tenet “majority rules” in a situation that can so easily lead to disorientation, injury, or loss of life.

Decisions made at the top of mountains (or indeed anywhere on mountains) should not be made by casting votes, particularly considering that the people making them are often cold, wet, stressed, ill, injured, over-exposed. They should instead be made using as much information as you have or can gather about your situation. A map and compass will prove invaluable to this end, as will an alert but calm state of mind maintained by regular intake of food and water.

We moved slowly forward as we became more and more sure we were on the right track and thankfully the cloud began to lift as we moved. As we got lower and lower we warmed up and dried off and the rest of the descent passed without incident.

My fear and dread of Scafell Pike was unwarranted. I really enjoyed it. It’s in a beautiful location and has great views from the top, even if only glimpsed. It’s certainly a mountain I would recommend and it can form part of a much longer walk if you want it to, with so many paths from other fells and mountains leading to it.

Date of walk: 22 July 2011.

Related articles

• Three peaks, three days (mountainleadertraining.wordpress.com)