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The English Lake District is famed for rugged cliffs, bald stony felltops overlooking everything from the reservoir at Borrowdale to the Irish Sea, and wind-whipped paths leading to some of the worst weather you could ask for. It’s also famed for the great poets, Beatrice Potter, and even the Keswick pencil factory.
This is not the Lake District that I chose to visit. A bit further south but still well within Lakeland territory, the Langdale valley hosts winding streams and patched farmland, up from which rise lush green foothills scabbed with pikes of rough grey rhyolite. It is better known to rock climbers than to tourists, and has a feeling of being off the beaten path. For the American living in east Anglia who is lucky enough to have a car, Langdale is a five-hour drive mostly on motorways and is home to campsites from National Trust to farmer-owned fields, much better suited to those on a budget.
This my last official duty for trip planning for the Mountaineering Club of Cambridge University, it was with some nostalgia that I crammed five people plus gear into my car and set off to the tiny picturesque village of Chapel Stile where past- and present club members would converge for a weekend of rock climbing and banter. When we arrived around midnight with high hopes of sunshine the next day, a few beers with compatriots from Edinburgh, Cheltenham, Wales and even New Jersey saw us quickly to sleep in anticipation of an early start.
The New Jersey member of our crew deserves a special mention: an amazing physicist and competitive climber for a national-level US team, Ben had spent a year in Cambridge but was now living in the US and working in Switzerland for the summer and had flown up for the weekend purely to coincide with our trip. His presence and commitment to travel for the sake of good company and good times in the mountains impressed us all.
History supports our choice of destination as Haskett Smith noted in Climbing in the British Isles (1984) “…there are times even in the Lake District when the rain ceases and the sun shines, and it is then that the climber should gambol upon this crag.” With this in mind we headed a short way up the valley to Gimmer Crag, marveling at how some fifteen of us had managed to be on the trail by eight o’clock. The five kilometer hike up the fellside to the south-east face of the 525m crag was steep and rocky, but the faster members of our party waited patiently for slower members and I was proud of the group’s effort to keep everyone happy.
Unfortunately, I have no tales of adventure involving dramatic off-route epics and poorly-rigged anchors to aid escapes from sheer featureless cliffs infested with dart-shooting natives and sudden snowstorms. Rather, it was the type of glorious climbing day that had me whistling a tune as I skipped up a beautiful three-star route called ‘Bracket and Slab’ in the Fell and Rock Climbing Club guidebook. It was not without its moments—cowering under a ledge while trying to convince myself to take a bold step across to a flake so I could attach my ropes to something secure and feel protected while finishing the pitch—but overall, it was a day for enjoying time at sunny belay stations and reveling in the joys of being out in a remote place, gaining views that your standard tourist never would, and occasionally seeing a fellow climber pop up over some overhanging block and sharing the enjoyment with a friendly wave or shout.
The day was capped off with a filling pub meal in the Stickle Barn pub (to be followed by a pint at the Wainwright, a tribute to Lakes poetry right by our campsite).
An exhausted team half-hoping for the next day’s weather to force a relaxing day of tourism rather than rock climbing awoke the next morning to cloudy skies but little excuse not to climb. The (apparently well-developed) British climber in me proposed that we base ourselves at the Old Dungeon Ghyll hotel and complete the short walk to Raven Crag, thus being near a nice warm pub in case of a downpour. A quick game of cat-herding got everyone there and Fiona and I left Rich, Paul, and Ed at the base of a climb called ‘Pluto’ while we made our way around to ‘Saversnake’ to try to beat the weather.
Pleased with ourselves for struggling up three pitches of slippery polished rock and encountering a near-miss as Paul took a scary fall off his route where it intersected ours, we found ourselves bursting with laughter when the clouds burst open with torrential rain just as Fiona arrived at a solid belay ledge from which we could escape via a hikers’ trail. I laughed my way up the last pitch which was now a waterfall, unable to see as streams of Lakeland rain poured into my face, and we drowned rats disassembled our rope system and scrambled down to the (now-flooded) gully in which we’d left our rucksacks. Some climbers had kindly moved our bags onto a rock, though not before my boots had filled with water and my poor little digital camera had drowned an unfortunate death.
Splashing back down to the pub where we joined the rest of our bedraggled group and many other climbers changing into dry clothes and swapping tales in the parking lot, I contemplated the good fortune by which the rain had started when it had. If it had been just a half hour earlier, we would have been in a dangerous position without sufficient rope length to escape due to my decision of what gear to carry that day. The English weather gods giveth and the English weather gods taketh away, but any visitor to the Lake District should be prepared for their chosen outdoor activity. We got lucky.
Back in Ambleside, the Lakeland town at the head of the valley a stone’s throw away from Grasmere with the famous gingerbread shop, we provided entertainment for tourists and hikers who were enjoying watching the sea of rained-off climbers flood the gear shops and pubs. As we ogled shiny climbing toys that we couldn’t afford, we chatted about the weekend’s best moments which combined classic Lakes experiences (rain, pubs, and more rain) with the novelty of traveling off the beaten path in a less tourist-filled area.
Our pro climber Ben had spent most of the weekend leading folks up moderately-graded climbs, obviously very easy for him, so that he could contribute to keeping everybody happy. The best moment of the trip for me was when I overheard Helen thanking him and his response was “it doesn’t matter if you’re the best climber in the world…if you can’t go out and enjoy a day of climbing easy routes in a beautiful place, then why are you doing it in the first place?”
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Copyright © 2010 Rachel Berkowitz
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