Sunday, 4th Jan, Crinkle Crags

Another cold and frosty day in the Lakes with clear skies and sunshine. Today is the final walk in the series of festive walks we have been running over the holiday period. We have a large group and I have been assisted today by Sarah.

Our walk started at The Old Dungeon Ghyll car park and headed up Oxendale, before starting the long steep climb up to Red Tarn. This part of the route had lots of ice on the path and we had to choose our route carefully. The hills were much quieter today than they have been recently despite the good weather and we seen relatively few groups.

From Red Tarn we followed the path up past Great Knott to the ridge of Crinkle Crags. From the top of the first Crinkle we had some wonderful 360 degree views of the Lakes and beyond. Our planned route included an ascent of The Bad Step and we made our way across the ridge to the foot of the large rock step.

The group easily managed to scramble up the step and the made their way up the remaining part of the scramble to the summit cairn for our well earned lunch break in the afternoon sun.

The descent route involved traversing the remaining Crinkles towards Three Tarns and the long path down The Band. As I discovered yesterday this route has a number of large patches of ice covering the path in places and care is required at present to avoid slipping.

When we reached the valley and the ODG car park some of the group were keen to test out their head torches. So a smaller group set off up the hill again to Side Pike. Our route here would start in the Blea Tarn side of the hill and after climbing steeply to the col we traversed the hillside to pass through "The Squeeze" and onto the summit by some easy scrambles in the dark. The descent back down to the cars involved a number of short down climbs and everyone had the opportunity to test their headtorches before we completed our day in Great Langdale.