Assault on Ingleborough

The plan for yesterday was meant to be a Cutthroat Bridge to Snake Pass High Peak Marathon recce with Gav and Hester but the humungous dump of snow that fell on Friday night put mockers on that -  to tell you the truth, having been over Howden Edge and Bleaklow in really deep snow before, I knew it would have been a truly epicsome (read completely and utterly stupid) adventure but, as Snake Pass was showing as closed to the snow first thing on Saturday, I was relieved to be able to knock it on the head with a rock solid excuse. The roads locally in Settle were chocka with snow anyway so just getting to the High Peak would have been tricky and worse still for Hes and Gav, coming down from Masham and Thirsk.

So.... I decided to trot up Ingleborough with Haz (not to be confused with Hes) from Austwick instead. Our route up Ingleborough from Austwick is a doddle in normal weather involving crossing the deadly lawn like paths of Norber, dodging the ravenous swarms of grass devouring swaledales, avoiding the bunny deatheaters and generally using a track that you could follow blindfold, but yesterday the snow made it really properly tough. Straight from the off it was hard work trying to run, as the snow was so deep, but this was nothing as to what came later - I was having to walk when the snow was a foot deep to begin with but, after a while, I was glad of the snow just being a foot deep as it gave me the chance to run! And the snow was the sticky, heavy kind (great for snowball making) rather the the light icy powdery stuff (crap for snowball making) that we'd had in the past two weeks, making it all the more of a grind to plough on.

It normally takes me an hour to get to the summit of Ingleborough (5 miles) this way on a track thats normally brilliantly runnable but yesterday the same 5 miles took me 2 hours and 15 minutes!! We were battling out our own furrow through the snow all the way, with no others having been up before us to cut a path, and gee whiz, the snow just became unbelievable, especially after the double ladder stile below Simon Fell. The mile from there to the top of Ingleborogh was waist deep a lot of the time and poor old Harry really struggled to follow me here; the plucky little lad forged on though and we finally found the wind shelter on the top plateau, itself ice encased and virtually invisible in the white cloud and snow.

From there, after the snow was initially very deep and drifty coming off the summit, we managed to find our way down to the top of Little Ingleborough where, at long last, we finally picked up the footprints of two walkers who passed us going the other way. By the time we reached Gaping Gill more footfall had been added by a few other hardy walkers and we were running on a proper trod, making the second half of our run actually... a run.

Just fantastic though. 10 miles in 3 hours 32 minutes!!!

Harold with Norber beyond

Me and the boy

Looking back at our tracks

Harry furrowing on

"Too infinity and beyond!"

Nick Pot - it doesn't look like this in the 3 Peaks Fell race!

Into the white out

Harry doing his bit to de-ice the wind shelter

Our route