Wasdale Week-end

Each year at about this time, I get together with Graeme and Jason, some friends I met in the Alps, at Graeme’s place in Wasdale for a week-end’s climbing, scrambling and walking. Last year we had one of the few great week-ends of a poor summer and managed a great multi pitch on Scafell (Pisgah Buttress Direct) and the uber classic Napes Needle.  With the forecast for this year, it seemed more likely that we’d mount an expedition to the pub to watch the Lions game !

However, we are made of sterner stuff than that and although the cloud was hanging menacingly at around 550M the rain was holding off, so in ‘True Brit’ style we decided in a trip to Pillar via a grade II scramble up Wistow Crag.  European mountaineers are often bemused by the British tendency to go out even in bad weather, preferring themselves to wait for it to pass – what they don’t realise is that if we did that, we would never get out !

After dicing with danger avoiding the crazy minibuses of the 3 peakers, we had a pleasant walk up Mosedale. The pictures below show the walk-in our crag (middle pic top centre) and looking back down Mosedale. Once we started climbing in the murk pictures seemed pretty pointless !

Following a grind up the steep grass and rock slope we reached the base of the buttress just underneath the cloud base. Here we geared up – harnesses on as a precaution in case we needed them, rope handy in the top of the sack and helmets on – had a bite and a drink and set off, Graeme taking the lead.

 

The route itself was not very clear and in the poor visibility we initially found ourselves half way a horribly greasy and vegetated groove with nothing but clumps of grass for handholds. From this less than inspiring position, we decided retreat was the best option and in fact abseiled the last bit to avoid an unpleasant, greasy looking down climb - not looking great for a good day out !

However, after that initial false start, we found a more promising option with cleanish looking rock nearer the centre of the crag and I led off.  Although the bare rock was quite grippy, climbing wet slabs with mossy patches in big boots in the wet is never confidence inspiring and so we made fairly slow progress initially. But as we got higher, the climbing got better, my frequent comments of “Remind me again why we do this?” got less and we actually started to enjoy ourselves, even though by now we were in thick cloud.  We passed a narrow neck in the crag and had some pretty good, easy scrambling on the upper section before it faded out to a broad slope where we met the path to Pillar summit and hunkered down to eat lunch in a surprisingly well sheltered spot behind a wall of rocks.

 

From  Pillar we aimed North West in the murk and found the easy but slippy scramble down to the famous climbing venue of Pillar Rock - which in the conditions was nothing more than a dark, menacing outline.  I’m up in this area with a group in August so we decided to do some recce work by following the high level traverse back past Robinsons Cairn to meet up again with the main path near Black Sail Pass. This is a really enjoyable section even though we were denied the views, but it was greasy and a bit exposed in places – food for thought before August.

Once back at the junction with the main track, we headed to the col at the top of Black Sail Pass  and descended down the well made, easy path back down into Wasdale and with the beer light now fully illuminated, we made the Wasdale Head pub after a seven hour outing just as the rain started properly for the first time that day.  There is something very satisfying about sitting in a pub with a pint, watching the heavens open and knowing you managed to avoid it!

All in all a very enjoyable day and much better than I had dared hope for when I looked the forecast on Friday.