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Friday 14 January 2011

New Year walks

My first walk of 2011 was a trip up to Coniston, to revisit a walk I did in October last year, where I went up onto Dow Crag via South Rake, and then round onto The Old Man of Coniston, that was a very misty and viewless day so a return on a clear day was in order. This is a great walk and a great way to get up onto Dow Crag, an exciting scramble up South Rake amongst the tall cliffs and crags of Dow Crag, this is really climbers territory but the Rake gives you a feel for it but is an easier scramble. My second walk was up onto Bowfell, more details below.

Dow Crag and The Old Man from the drive through Torver

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Dow Crag from The Cove

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The waterfalls from the outflow of Goats Water, the crags of Dow Crag in the background.

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The steep climb up the scree to locate the stretcher box at the foot of the crags

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Goats Water

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Climbing the scree to the stretcher box

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getting nearer

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A brief rest at the stretcher box before heading up South Rake

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At the start of South Rake

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Climbing higher up the rake

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Looking back down the climb

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At the exit of South Rake onto the Dow Crag summit ridge

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Looking along the ridge to Brown Pike and Buck Pike

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The Duddon Estuary

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The Scafell range from Dow Crag

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Scafell Pike

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Scafell

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The Scafells from a very icy Goats Hause

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Dow Crag and Goats water on the path up to the Old Man

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Dow Crag from Coniston Old Man

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Same photo with my route of ascent up South Rake marked on

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The Old Man of Coniston summitt

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Looking over Small Water towards Wetherlam

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Coniston and Coniston water far below

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Brown Pike, and Blind Tarn just visible

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A very frozen Small Water

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Long abandoned mine buidings

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My second walk of the New Year was planned to be from Langdale up Oxendale onto and over Crinkle Crags and then up onto Bowfell, and descending via the Climbers Traverse. But the weather conspired against me, on arriving early it looked really good the fells were snow covered and the forecast was good until late afternoon when more heavy snow was forecast. I got up to Red tarn fine only to see a heavy weather front coming in over the Coniston fells, deciding to push on up onto the Crinkles the bad weather came in really quickly and I decided to turn around on the first crinkle, in knee deep snow and a complete whiteout in blizzard conditions, it would have been suicidal to carry on, so I retraced my steps thankfully my crampon tracks were just visible. A wise decision I think, and the mountains will always be there another day,

Looking good coming down Langdale, Crinkle Crags and Bowfell covered on snow

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Its really tough during the winter up here, this sheep falling foul

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''You think you are coming through here''!!

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A very friendly Shire horse at Stool End farm

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Looking back down the beck in Oxendale from the bridge, a very different view later!

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All the waterfalls were laden with ice

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strange ice structures

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Looking over Hell Gill to Bowfell

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More icy waterfalls

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Looking over a frozen Red Tarn to wetherlam, the clouds are coming in

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The Langdale Pikes clear at the moment

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The black snow clouds now coming in quickly over the Coniston fells

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Pike O Blisco as the weather closes in

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Crinkle Crags start to disappear, I got up onto the first crinkle but the snow really came down and navigation was all but impossible, the sensible thing was to bin it and turn round, not something I like doing but I like living more!!

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Managed to get to the top of Cold Pike before that got obliterated by snow, cold by name cold by nature, it was flipping freezing by now

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The snow was catching me up as I descended, again looking over to the Langdale Pikes

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A rather different view down Langdale when I got back to the bridge

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And looking up into Oxendale

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The Shire horse I met on the way up, looked thoroughly fed up in the snow

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The Crinkles and Bowfell now disappeared into the heavy snow clouds

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When I got back to the car, decided to have some butties before leaving, as soon as they were out the Robins were on the scrounge, really tame and happy to feed off my hand.

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The wing mirror, and my head at times were a handy perch

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Couldnt entice the blackbird to feed off my hand though

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