Whernside

Yes folks, its yetanother Yorkshire Dales 2000 foot top. Not far to go now. Nearly finished. Bear with me….
Bruno parked the knipemobile near the tea van at Ribblehead.(Its not fair, I always drive…) I allowed myself to be exploited to the tune of one cup of coffee and one egg butty. They were both very nice.

Most people, I suspect, use the Three Peaks path to get themselves up Whernside. Its a big hill, though and sports a number of routes. This one is a slight but interesting version of the Yorkshire Three Peaks (Y3P) route.

Thus, we followed the railway line (very busy today) to Blea Tunnel and then the Y3P path till it does a sharp left towards the summit. Three Peakers need to get up and down Whernside as quickly as possible. Today, though, me and superdawg were allowed a bit more of a daunder. We continued towards Dentdale on a bridleway called The Craven Way. This uses a band of carb limestone to make progress through the bogs. The result is a path through white and grey boulders on a carpet of  bright green grass, shorn short by the sheep and very easy to walk on. In fact, with the forward views of the Howgill fells, its an absolute bloody delight.

We sauntered along easily , downhill for a bit , to Duncan Syke, a ruin which at one time was considered as a site for an MBA bothy. Then it came time to make the climb up Whernside. This starts at the edge of some enclosures and a soggy path climbs fairly gently uphill. There is no need for a sweat to be broken into on this route.
I left the path after a bit to investigate a shelter with a fine view of Dentdale. Worra grand place for a snooze….

A thin path continues uphill from here, passing two cairns with equally fine views.


After all these fine views, I turned back towards the original path, passing three small tarns on the way. This route would be great for practising your micro-navigation in the hillfog. If it’s foggy and you’ve got your compass, go this way. If it all goes pear –shaped (and it probably will), resort to the simple expedient of walking uphill till you get to the top. Whatever you do, don’t panic and ring your Dad.  Or the police. Or anybody. go uphill till there’s no more uphill to go up. Its an advanced navigation technique, so don’t tell anybody about it. Note: It doesn’t work very well in descent.

I joined the Y3P path again and was soon sitting behind the wall on the summit with my cheese and tomato butty and banana and some coffee. The summit clientele for today seemed to consists substantially of families or Dads and their kids. This exactly is how it should be. Having a whinge about the crowds on top of one of these hills during the summer hols is just silliness. I think its great. As long as everybody enjoys themselves anyway.

Sooo – after a bit, we slouched off for the trying descent towards the Hill Inn. The path is being repaired just now, but the old path works are awkward and a serious trip hazard. You wouldn’t want to trip up on this path. You’d lose your face…. This would be a disadvantage when ordering a foaming pint of Scruttocks Old Dirigible at the pub at the end, and your dog wouldn’t recognise you either and might bite your leg. This would just rub it in. So be careful.
At the bottom, I followed two lasses who seemed to know where they were going and we all ended up back at the Ribblehead tea van. Once again I succumbed to the temptation of a nice hot cuppa and some cake.
All hail to the Tea Van

We did 10 miles and 1700 feet of uphill. I’d recommend this route if you’re just out to bag Whernside. The edge with the cairns has very cracking views indeed.
The finishing end is in sight…….

Whernside - in a blizzard

One thing you have to do with any skill is to practise. Practise practise practise.

And so, I steered the knipemobile to the layby quite near to Ribblehead to meet Mike from Go4awalk again for a bit of ice axing. The idea was to find a slope, slide down it in various positions, several times until tired and wet – and, incidentally, whilst trying to stop oneself sliding down the slope. And then climb Whernside.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of snow at Ribblehead. There was a lot of ice, but any snow seemed to be high up on the slopes. There was a fair bit on Ingleborough, but I just been up Ingleborough, see?

Anyway, so we walked up the path by Force Gill and then, at the foot of the last steep bit, we traversed along till we could see a likely looking bit of steep snow to climb in our crampons.

This we did. It was quite steep at the top and just scary enough to get the adrenalin glands doing a bit of squirting. Good experience, though, and if anybody had blobbed off, the run-out wasn’t too bad. I guess it was about three hundred feet or so.

At the top, it were blowing a right old hoolie and an attempt at luncheon in blocka/survival bags failed, so we determined to visit the trig on the top and then sod off forthwith. On the way up to the trig, the blizzard intensified into a grade 1 Class A sub class 7 industrial strength blinding blast. We tarried not at the summit, nor did we attempt a circular route, but put the wind behind us and went down the “up” path.

A lunch was had behind a wall and in a small snowdrift at about 500-ish metres.

We then sodded off and went home. At home, a further four inches or so of extra snow had come down. Wet, sloppy stuff, though. It’ll all melt.