Scafell Pike with an element of risk

As the owner of a Garmin I took it upon myself to sort out the route for our hike. So with that I must take full responsibly for getting us pretty lost, well maybe lost is too strong a word but taking us up the wrong route initially.

As a bunch of big strong South Africans I decided on everyone's behalf that we would not do the regular route and look for a more challenging route. My decision seemed like the correct one when we all got together on the long drive to the Lake District. Apparently Scafell Pike has a reputation of a mountain that geriatrics climb. As our lead Voortrekker put it "I want a hobby with an element of risk", it had just so happened that I had picked the shortest route to the peak, at only 8 miles. I sold this idea to the less fit smokers in our group and tried not to focus on the point that it was also the steepest route.

To be honest the route decision was mainly based on finding a route on the internet that I could save onto my Garmin. In the process I read lots of routes and saved a number of routes. I remember one had a description of slightly eroded path, but was sure that was not the one that finally ended up on my Garmin.

The drive up from London was pretty non spectacular. A few beers and a bottle of Jack Daniels managed to numb most of the passengers. Ronnie being the most numb "Taste this coffee, its awesome, I drink it like this at work, its the vanilla that tastes so good". No ronnie my love its the Jack Daniels we spiked your coffee with that makes it taste so fantastic. So the drive up went pretty quickly for us. Once we arrived at the Youth hostel, the real truth of the geriatrics in the Lake District came true. It was like a boy scout troop had come here 50 years ago and not left. The place was packed with retired men and the odd couple. The only youth there was the girl behind the counter.

After a quick settle in and afternoon nap we headed into town to get something to eat. With a 10 mile radius of the hostel there was about 5 pubs, one tiny little shop and no cellphone reception. Luckily they sold Soya Milk at the shop so I was happy and we managed to have a pint and some decent dinner at a very quite pub (it was packed with deaf people, seriously).

Saturday morning was the day, a 3 mile drive to the start of the hike took us a good 30 minutes with the little lanes and out big people carrier. We could have hiked from our hostel but the 21km journey was not so inviting for some of the unfit members of the crew. The iphones had no coverage, so navigation was down to my garmin and the ordnance survey map we had.

I learned a lot about navigation this day. Mistake number one we parked at the wrong car park and I assumed that we would meet up with the route on the Garmin pretty quickly if we followed the path from the car park. A quick check on the map seemed to back this up. So we headed off, about 1km in we realised we where still on the wrong side of the river and the path was 600m to the other side. In my mind 600m was pretty close but it turned out to be over the cliff in the next valley, mistake number 2.

Not realising this, we took an off road short cut straight up the valley to try and intersect the route we where meant to be on. This route straight up was pretty tough, we climbed from 100m to about 400m in elevation in probably 1km, slow going. We where not on a path and the terrain was not ideal either soggy grass or loose gravel.

We got within 200m of the path and I accepted the fact that the 200m was in fact the other side of the mountain and we could not get to it because of the cliffs we where now looking up at. Mistake number three rather than going down the mountain and going back on the path we decided to follow the cliffs and go around the mountain to join the path. The map backed this up so after a snack we head our way around the cliffs. Still not on a path we made our way slowly around and eventually found the path we wanted, it was 60m away on the other side of a huge gorge.

In all seriousness if we had the right gear and experience it would have been friggin cool just to abseil down the gorge. One day we should do that, but today we did not. We did a little reky to see if we could go over the gorge, rather than going down the mountain and climb up the distance again. After a few life and death moments and serious thoughts of rocks slides we decided as a group to not push our luck any further and just go down to the path. This turned out easier than I expected and by 4 oclock we where once again down to about 200m and having lunch by a little stream. 6 hours into our hike and we had not made much progress, luckily everyone was still very positive so we headed on. This time making sure to keep on the path no matter what.

Progress on the path was so much easier than our bondu bashing, so we soon come out of the valley and met up with the main route to the peak. We had not seen that main people so far but as we met up with the main path there was a steady stream of people coming up and down (a fair few geriatrics I might add). As we looked back the path most people came along was almost a paved path very civilised and takes less than 2 hours to get up. It was taken us about 7 hours to get to the top, with a few moments of risk.

Once we got to the crowded peak we tucked down to wait the rest of the crew. The wind really catches you up there so we suited up with all our gear to keep warm before we headed down. Suckers for punishment we did not take the tourist path down and instead stuck to our route. This was probably another mistake, but turned out to be quite fun, in years to come we will look back and smile about it, maybe. The path we took was totally eroded, the path just stopped and there was a 100m drop off loose rock and gravel that just gave way underfoot, you could not get to close to the person in front of you in case the rocks you kicked loose rolled down and killed them. That together with the risk of rock slides freaked me out quite nicely. The brave 3 headed down using a technique of sliding down on there bumps, while W and I went around to try and find a path down. We did find a new path being developed further along which zigzaged down which was safer but still not ideal.

By this time everyone was pretty knackered physically and was as mentally I imagine, our route did meet up with the main one. Most of the people we saw on top where just coming down the main route, so we did not lose any time with our extra adventure.

The rest of the hike down was easy enough and we managed to get into the pub at the carpark just in time to get last dinner orders in. 10 hours and 13 km in totaly, super hike in all, highest peak in Britian conquered. Just Scotland and Whales to nail now.