The Langdale Pikes and Storm Abigail: how I got navigation so wrong

Once you discover the Langdale Pikes you can’t believe your luck. And hiking the Langdale Pikes is something that you’ll never forget. Starting from the ‘New Hotel’ in Great Langdale, you’ll bag Loft Crag, Pike of Stickle, Thunacar Knott, Harrison Stickle and then there’s Pavey Arc – from Harrison, up Easy Gully or Jack’s Rake?

Is this walk for you?

If this route was a good idea, you probably wouldn’t be reading this. If I ever do the Langdale Pikes this way again, it’ll be an adventure I’m writing about, not an example I use to show clients, as a Mountain Leader, the consequences of poor decisions and why you need to be able to navigate without a phone.

My embarressing Langdale Pikes hike

So, I take on the Langdale Pikes, fells I’ve explored a number of times since and become very familiar with, but here, I don’t know what to expect, know very little about navigation and I get hit by a storm that will devastate most of Cumbria!

Note: In the days after I did this walk, the storms have flooded lots of peoples homes and villages in Cumbria. This has been well documented, especially on social media where campaigns for help, financially and physically have been very successful in bringing communities back to life before Christmas.

Discovering the Langdale Valley, looking from Elterwater Village

Taking on The Langdale Pikes

After a nice evening in The Travellers Rest in Grasmere where I planned today’s walk, and the night in the van in the layby down the road, I get up, have a basic breakfast and head for the Great Langdale Valley.

I paid £8 to park the van in the National Park car park for the day at the ‘new’ hotel and couldn’t help thinking it would be cheaper staying at Basebrown camp site last night and walk down here – but I didn’t know it existed!

Wainwright’s Langdale challenge

I followed a route away from the madding crowds. Wainwright tells of a way up that seemed exciting, a scramble really, a gully and a chockstone are involved but maybe things have changed since then, there are fences and I can’t be sure I’m going up the right way. I stick with it and can’t help thinking that Alfred was just making things hard for himself. Not being used to scrambling, I find it a tough ascent. Can I recommend you follow the streams of hikers up by Stickle Ghyll, it’s actually a beautiful ascent I’ve enjoy many times after today.

Looking up the gully I assume Wainwright suggested as an ascent!

Loft Crag

I make it up, somewhere in between Pike Of Stickle, and Loft Crag which I summit first. Wainwright’s gully seems a very strange way to ascend a group of fells that have a perfectly nice, interesting and challenging ascent in Stickle Ghyll as it is. I mean, if you saw someone coming up there, you’d wonder what was going on in their head!

Harrison Stickle from the top of the gully

There’s a nice view of Harrison Stickle from here. Note the amount of walkers all around the fell. It’s midday and at this point nobody is ascending, EVERYONE I can see is heading down! Red flag?

Pike Of Stickle

I ended up ascending the last lump of Pike Of Stickle round the back, having to climb up a shallow gully which was completely unnecessary as there is an easy way up when the cloud doesn’t stop you seeing it. On the summit I find a topless young woman. Her soaking t-shirt is on the cairn and she’s putting on a dry top from her boyfriend’s bag. I didn’t get a photo. I say my hellos, they departed pretty quickly.

After descending Pike of Stickle I follow the path you see to the west of Harrison, over a stream, which I assumed was a path. The group that were there earlier have buggered off by this time and have their feet up in front of a fire at the pub. I have the Langdales to myself. It’s about 2 o’clock, I head north for Thurnacar Knott first.

Thrunacar Knott

Just before reaching the ‘summit’ of this relatively flat Wainwright, I see a couple just standing there in the middle of nowhere completely lost and soaking wet with a paper map. The map is ruined because it’s soaked. When you rub the paper into a pocket or bag it just gets destroyed. I told them to either buy the Active laminated maps or use a case for the cheaper paper ones.

Harrison Stickle

So, this photo is my fourth summit of the day, Harrison Stickle. I approach it almost via the ridge you see from east to west (although there seemed to be a crag in the way on the day). It was very foggy, the photos I attempted that afternoon were pointless other than the close ups. I even had to wander around the summit to find what I thought was the highest point until I came to what seemed like the cliff edge to my right. I’m sure the view is extraordinary up there when you have one.

Here are my four summit photos, see the joy in me on Loft Crag and the pain in me on Harrison Stickle. Neither of the gloves in the photos are mine. I’m not actually as worried as I look in this photo on Harrison Stickle, that develops as I descend.

The sh!t hits the fan

Here’s where I get brutally honest, and have little image evidence to show how bad things get.

A glimpse of Dungeon Ghyll below Harrison Stickle

It’s late 2015, i’m inexperienced in the mountains. Instead of heading north off Harrison, then contouring round to the east to Pavey Arc summit, I read my dry map incorrectly. I head south-ish back to the path which would lead you ‘under’ Harrison and round to Stickle Tarn, and manage to capture one last photo of a waterfall before continuing round. I’ve not been this way and as the fog engulfs the fells, I think I’m on a shallow death inducing terrace. I can hear the rage of Dungeon Ghyll below me but can no longer see down into the abyss.

It’s bang on three o’clock when I take this photo and darkness on a good day will be shortly after four. I could carry on into the unknown, not knowing what awaits me, or retrace my steps back to the ‘well defined’ path (now a river) leading to another unknown descent (definitely not going back down the gully I ascended!).

I’ll hope you can appreciate (this is 2015) as I’ve said before, I now realise how crap I am at navigation. What happened next is as weird to me as it is today, I can only assume that I didn’t go south enough to meet the very obvious path. Take a look at the route map below and you’ll see that path, completely out of my sight.

The phone inevitably dies

My battery’s been running low on the phone for ages and eventually it dies, I’ll soon wonder if I would follow in it’s ‘footsteps’.

There’s a crossing of paths on the map which I must have cut out, so thinking that the ‘stream’ was a path in good weather, I walk off along what will become Dungeon Ghyll. I should have gone a little further and met the path. Instead of following the track, I hugged the edge of Dungeon Ghyll, this time on the south side.

I zig-zag south, north, south, north, whilst trying relentlessly to find a way east towards what I thought would be Stickle Ghyll, my brain’s failing me now. The phone’s sleeping and my map is useless to my tired, fed up eyes. It’s getting very dark for an afternoon’s walk and I struggle to see the map with no light. Every ten minutes I’m looking down a cliff-side into thick fog. I’m soaked, colder by the minute and have no food left.

I sit down in my drenched clothes, ponder into the map and take stock. I’m nowhere near Stickly Ghyll. I must be heading down by Dungeon Ghyll. I physically point at the crags on the map. ‘These must be the ‘cliffs’ I’ve been fighting’. The torrent rumbles to my north. If I’m stuck on this spur, with cliffs on my east and south, it’ll mean the path is to my west.

Common sense prevails. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, I pick up the track to the west and head south, down. I drop below the fog and see the van in the car park, three thousand miles away. I might have welled up, I’m free! Three thousand miles is achievable.

It took about an hour to get to the floor of the valley. My legs shoot with fatigue as I descended the well trodden Dungeon Ghyll rocky path. I don’t think I’ve ever been so motivated to learn how to use a map and compass, pack more food than I need, carry a dry set of clothes, all that stuff.

The Langdale Pikes soon after I reach the van, Storm Abigail takes over!

Not long after this little adventure, I sign up to do the Mountain Leader Award and go on to teach hundreds of hikers navigation in the Lakes, Peak District and the Highlands of Scotland – especially in the darkness. And of course, I use my Langdale Pikes story to drive home how essential a skill it is.