My perception of the British mountains is that they are far more crowded than in previous years, when I used to wander around the hills as a young instructor, but I was amazed today by the lack of other people on the Langdale Pikes, the first Sunday of the school half term.
After the walk up from the valley, following the course of the stream, we left Stickle Tarn and headed around to the north east side of Pavey Ark, where we found some great ice to play around on, whilst heading towards the summits. Living in Jersey I don't get much opportunity to use my crampons, so it was a truly memorable day.
From when we left Stickle Tarn until we reached the New Dungeon Ghyll nearly 5 hours later we only saw 8 other people.
Nicky heading towards Stickle Tarn, it appeared that there was a temperature inversions as we climbed out of the valley clouds into clearer air. The summits were still shrouded in low cloud.
Just past Stickle Tarn it was time to put on the crampons, it had been a few years since they had last been used so we wanted to check their reliability before we headed onto steeper ground. We had this area virtually to ourselves.
We threaded our way up narrow funnels of ice. Always fun but the consequences of a fall were minimal. Great fun.
As we climbed higher the visibility deteriorated, but climbing over the mixed ground remained entertaining.
After crossing over Pavey Ark and Harrison Stickle we dropped out of the cloud and easily found the start of the path to Dungeon Ghyll.
We quickly lost height and the stunning panorama of Langdale came into view. The end of a great day out.
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