The first weekend of March was the first annual meet for UoN Mountaineering. The club was formed by the merger of Explorers and MPS a few years ago, and so it was also a reunion for there members. I went on two walks, on the Saturday along High Street and the Sunday up Skiddaw.

On the Fridays we all ended staying up late and being merry. On Saturday I joined a group walking along High Street. Starting from Cow bridge near Brotherswater, we walked in a circular route up to The Knott (739 m), High Street (828 m), Thornthwait Crag (784 m), Stony Cove Pike (763 m). Although not a complete white-out the visibility was poor at times and I used the opportunity to practice my navigation. For the top section we broke the route down into legs, walked on bearings and counting paces. This was successful and we were able to efficiently reach all the summits. There was also a full snow coverage but as this was all soft powder we did not need to use our axes or crampons.

The walk took 5:57′, covering 14.1 km at 2.4 km/hr with 988 m of ascent and a Wainwright count of 4.

The Sundays walk was over Skiddaw. Starting at Ravenstone we walked up to Ling How, Ullock Pike (690 m), Long Side (734 m), Skiddaw (931 m), Skiddaw Little Man (865 m) and Lonscale Fell (709 m) and down to Wescoe.

We missed the summit of Carl Slide traversing around, which was not intentional, but we were distracted by Skiddaw. The visibility was excellent and we had bright sunshine all day. At higher altitudes there was snow, and we briefly used our ice axes in a few places but our crampons were only carried in our rucksacks.

I thought this was a great route and less of a slog than the popular direct approach from the south. I had preciously tried form the SE so the SW was a logical next. The only difficulty we had was on the descent from Lonscale were we tried a more direct route to Wescoe but this was very wet, muddy, and proved slow. On the map below is my recommended route, which avoids this area.

The walk took 6:45′, over 12.4 km  at 1.8 km/hr, with a height gain of 1165 m and Wainwright count of 5, we narrowly missed the 6th.

I enjoyed the weekend  and felt it was a success, hopefully it will become an annual event.