The sky was grey in the morning, and the hills shrouded in mist, but we set off walking from the campsite up towards Mickledore col between Scafell Pike and Sca Fell. After a bit of discussion we found the bottom of the Lord’s Rake, a scree route up to Sca Fell, in the mist. We had looked at and considered going up the rake on the last trip in April, and decided against it that time due to the deep snow in the gap.
This time it was clear of snow, so we started up the loose scree, and had completed the 3 ascents and 2 descents in 30 minutes. Emerging at the top of the rake path, we walked along the edge of the crags, looking at all the gullies to try to find the top of Deep Gill, from the top of where we would have emerged had we taken the West Wall traverse from the rake (an idea for another day?).
From the prominence of Symonds Knott, we walked directly across to the top of Sca Fell, then back down the same way again a little way to find the scree descent path for Foxes Tarn on the eastern side. We had come up via Foxes Tarn on the last trip, but taken a more direct route up from there to the top of Sca Fell as it had been made easier at that time with the solid snow, which had been great to walk on in crampons.
From Foxes Tarn, we found the gully to get further down before we could climb back up to Mickledore col from the other side. The gully felt a lot wider without snow. There was a horrible smell near the bottom, which it turned out was coming from a dead sheep that appeared to have been there for some time. On our way back up to the col, we passed a father and young daughter, who asked about where we had come from, as he was trying to find an easy way up to Sca Fell after coming down from Scafell Pike. When I discreetly mentioned the dead sheep, he did not seem bothered about it.
Once at Mickldore, we watched two men going up Broad Stand, a very exposed scramble (reportedly descended for the first time by Coleridge) that we have read about but not yet attempted. On the bad step, a 7ft wall, one man gave the other a push to help the other up to the top of the wall. Then we continued walking up towards Scafell Pike, looking back towards Broad Stand from time to time. There was a group of people descending from the top of Sca Fell towards Broad Stand, two of whom continued down as if trying to locate the route. Before they reached Broad Stand, however, they turned back to retrace their steps back up.
The top of Scafell Pike was quite busy as usual, with it being the highest summit in England. We did not stop, continuing north over the other side to the col between Scafell Pike and Broad Crag, after which we dropped down west from the col to take in Lingmell. We had only descended that col in snow, in April earlier this year, so again, it was interesting to experience it in different conditions. From Lingmell, we returned a little way to the top of Piers Gill, from where instead of taking the Corridor Route, we headed down the path beside the gill (above rather than inside, where unsuspecting people can get stuck from being unaware of its difficulties), which we had started on in April but from which we had headed back on that occasion.
This time, the path proved to be quite straightforward, with one section of easy scrambling. We were soon back down to the valley floor, sitting with a pint in the Wadsale Head Inn.
