Stolly's Running Blog: A 'bit' windy on Skiddaw!!

On Friday the Mountain Weather Information Service was predicting for Saturday high winds, rain and snow for the Lake District, with gusts of wind of up to 90 mph, possible white outs and a wind chill as low as -17° on the tops. So with that on our minds me, Hester and Harry met Gavin on Saturday morning at the Ravenstone Hotel on the west side of Skiddaw with a view to running a full tour of Skiddaw including a smattering of its surrounding peaks.

Needless to say, after a fine early morning travelling over (that was almost sunny), the wind started picking up and the rain started spitting almost as soon as we got out of the car. That said we had all the gear for grim weather and were keen to give Skiddaw a good thrashing come what may. And anyway there was a nice cap of snow on the hills and, not having seen much of snow at all so far this winter, we were more than willing to risk a 'bit of wind' to get up and in it.

Our planned route was to first head for a low lying peak, Watches, before heading up a ridge line north west of Skiddaw called Longside Edge which would take us over Ullock Pike, Long Side and Carl Side before heading up and over Skiddaw. We then thought we'd loop east and south from there, bagging a few more tops (Lonscale Pike, Jenkin Hill, Skiddaw Little Man and one or two others) and then heading back, visiting a final peak, Dodd, before returning to the car. Longside Edge is Wainwright's preferred route up Skiddaw and as described by the great man himself:

“There is no doubt in my mind that by far the best approach to the top of Skiddaw is by way of its north-west ridge. This offers a fine expedition along a narrow crest in exciting surroundings and provides excellent views throughout … for the collector of summits here are three waiting to be picked off in addition to Skiddaw”.

A great route in the making then.... but unfortunately we didn't make it!

We got to Watches fine and dandy but soon hit ice, and then ice and snow, then ice, snow and a full on jet stream of wind going up towards Ullock Pike. Ullock Pike by the way has a fantastic name derived from Old Norse which means 'where the wolves play' so Harry, who likes to pretend he's a wolf, especially couldn't wait to get up there.

The wind was strong right from the off but the gusts were picking up too as we got higher, meaning that we all had to lean really low into the wind to maintain our footing. Hester, who's a lightweight at the best of times (ho ho), was blown off her feet a couple of times on this ascent, from which she picked herself up from and boldly forged on, but, just below Ullock Pike, she was caught yet again by a very strong blast of wind that knocked off her feet, crashed her onto the rocky path and then sent her sliding down it for the best part of 20 metres. Ullock Pike was at about 680 metres and, after that our route would get ever higher and more exposed, so given that things could only get worse, we decided to knock our original route on the head, retreat and work out a doable route on the hoof. In any event Hester was really shook up by her fall and slide, with big knocks to her right knee, bum, elbow and ankle so we were actually relieved that Hester was able to carry on at all (especially as carrying her off in what was fast becoming a blizzard would have been hard work).

It was still extremely windy even when we got down into the valley, Southerndale. And yep, Hester got blown over yet again - this video at about the one minute mark!!

So from there we looped back, stopped at the car for a quick sandwich break before bashing up Dodd and back, mainly through fabulous (even in the pissing rain and slushy snow) woodland. On the way up to the top of Dodd, just a 'mere' 502 metres high, a helpful walker coming back down warned us to be careful as it was "windy up there". Ha ha, yeah it was windy as it turned out but it was like a lovely sea breeze compared to the wind we'd experienced on Ullock Pike... where the wolves play!