Wastwater to Langdale (24.05.2009)

I love this route to bits! Despite having had a rather miserable hike the previous day, this one was amazing. Great weather, and great views and greater company - which was more of an unintentional thing. Started off from the Wastwater YHA, made my way back up the tedious tarmac road to the northern end of Wastwater, and from there began the steady but popular route of ascent up Scafell Pike which runs along Lingmell Gill. Its pretty OK, nothing amazing though and it starts to flatten out after Hollow Stones. From there though its a somewhat loose climb up a gully to reach the col bewteen Scafell and Scafell Pike, but you're virtually at the top by the tim you get here. A nice gently slope up to the summit and here I was joined, as I expected by a lot of other hikers. All of us were happy faced and quite pleased with the views down over Wasdale and the nice feeling of being on top of England's highest, even though I've lost count of the number of times I've been up there, each trip seems to have something memorable about it. And I never tire of the scenery, and the majestic way Great Gable swoops down on all sides. Good choice of mountain in such great weather. I went from the summit, along the usual way towards Esk Hause, passing by Ill Crag and over to Great End, a small but worthwhile detour. Then its down the nice big path to the hause and back up the more interesting Esk Pike from where you continue to get great views north towards Keswick and straight down over Borrowdale. By this point I'd met a bunch of local guys, one of them was David, who apparently having worked and lived in Grasmere for most of his life, had never been up the fells around Langdale until now. Surprising? Maybe. But they were good company to chat to, and I discovered that he also happened to work in the famous Grasmere Gingerbread shop. Always handy to know if I ever pop in again!
So anyway, from Esk Pike it was on towards Bow Fell, nothing too special about that part of the route although it was nice to stay up high, then down to Three Tarns and up Crinkle Crags from the northern side. Not my usual approach to Crinkle Crags, but it meant having to climb down the 'Bad Step' rather than climb up it. It was OK though. Nothing too horrific happened.
After that though, it was pretty much plain sailing over the rest of Crinkle Crags, over Long Top and then easily down the path toward Red Tarn, and down again into Langdale via Browney Gill. All in all, a terrific day and I even managed to get offered a lift from Great Langdale to the youth hostel, which I was quite happy about because I would have missed the bus anyway and it wouldn't have been the most interesting walk back, even if it was nice weather still.