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Time: 6h. Up: 1010m. Down 945m.
Distance: 15km. Difficulty: hard Day 4: Grasmere (85m) to Patterdale (150m) Another up and over hike today to the village of Patterdale… but with an optional twist. For those who want a thrill, and if the weather is nice enough, it will be possible to go via Helvellyn, at 950m the third highest mountain in England, and then to descend via fabled Striding Edge, a steep knife-edged ridge that is a watchword for danger among English hikers. Sally’s eyes light up at the thought. We set off. I have come up with another strategy to keep Dad from going too fast. I’ll go behind him and engage him in conversation… while trying to avoid pun-ishment. I’ll go at a sensible pace and if he gets too far ahead then I’ll tell him I can’t hear him and he’ll have to stop or slow down to make me hear. And anyway, perhaps he has learned from yesterday. Not. He charges off as usual and is soon too puffed to carry on any sort of conversation… thereby rendering my strategy moot. I overtake and show him my backside again, but, oddly enough, even that fails to fully revive him. The damage is done. The cumulative wear and tear of the previous days, coupled with his quick start, leave him dragging. Today turns into a slow and exhausting day for him. I know this for two reasons: firstly, I can hear him panting behind me, even though I am going quite a bit slower than the day before, and secondly, Dave is with us. Now, for those of you that don’t know Dave, I’ll have to explain. Dave is one of the – scratch that – the nicest person you will ever meet. And he is always on the lookout for how he can make someone feel better, or take care of someone. It is immensely appropriate that he is a doctor. And so Dave, hiking with the two of us, keeps coming up to me and whispering, or making gestures, to draw my attention to the fact that my Dad needs to go slower or to take a rest. Dave is a human health and morale monitoring system for our group. We are lucky to have him. We come over the saddle and descend to Grisedale Tarn. There is no question that Dad and Oliver (still recovering from his illness) will go down the valley. Miles opts to join them, tired out after his Helm Crag jaunt the day before. Helvellyn is wreathed in clouds… not optimal weather for views or for Striding Edge. And me, well, to be honest, I’m a little tired, a little cold because it is a cold day and I climbed slowly, and I’m thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have an easy day for a change. And then I look at Sally and I know: if we don’t do Striding Edge she will hate me for ever. Russ, Sally, Dave and I head off up Dollywaggon Pike (your guess is as good as mine). To warm myself up I take the lead on the steep climb and set a fast pace. At first the four of us stick together, and then Dave, then Russ, drop slightly back. But not Sally. Of course not Sally. This is the Sally who is always out front, hikes faster than everyone else, who never complains or even seems to get tired. And this is the Sally I am trying to beat? I push harder. Sally is puffing audibly !! I push even harder. No further change: Sally is still there. Over the last couple of hundred meters of distance I make a supreme effort… and Sally drops about 5 meters back. VICTORY !!! And then I realize that I have been using my poles and she hasn’t and thus it was much easier for me than for her and the victory song dies on my lips. Oh well. Such is the fate of those mortals who challenge those who are not human. Like Sally. After I catch my breath, and the others catch up, we look around. Cotton-wool country. Not a thing to be seen other than 10-15m (35-50 feet) of path in front of us and stones on either side. We march off into a strange and muffled world, occasionally meeting other lost souls who appear out of the mist ahead, pass silently or with a quiet greeting, and then disappear into the mist behind. The top of the ridge of which Helvellyn is the highest point is wide and flat… so flat that a plane landed there in 1929… and then took off again… and the path is far enough away from the vertical eastern cliffs so that in the mist you cannot see them. A weird walk. Eventually we come to the summit, marked by a cairn and a shelter, and we stop for lunch. Time now for Striding Edge… but where is it? We can’t see it in the mist… and it isn’t obvious exactly where we should descend to find it. A mistake, given the cliffs, would be A Bad Thing. So, we walk carefully along to where it looks on the map like it ought to be and look down. Nothing… but there is a lot of erosion on the steep rocky slope below, as if many people have gone down and up there. This must be it, I say, and we go down. A minute later, the western end of Striding Edge looms up through the mist like a massive fossilized stegosaurus with its vertical plates of stone standing edge on along its back. You think I exaggerate? You think this is purple prose? Well, you weren’t there. That’s what it looked like. On either side the clouds roll… it is impossible to tell how far the drop is. All we can see is that the sides of Striding Edge are steep… very steep. Not something you would want to fall off of. But then I see that there is a path along one side… a mountain path with a drop-off on one side, but a path nevertheless. And any path is easier than the spine of the stegosaurus in front of us. And then I think: the heck with that. I tell the others: we are here to do Striding Edge, and we are going to do it right. And although it is almost a technical pitch, I climb a dozen feet straight up the first plates and walk and climb right along the very top, balancing and sometimes jumping from plate to plate. And the others follow! No crises of faith today. Except, something is wrong… Sally has taken an easier way !!! It is almost too shocking to comprehend. It was just for a moment, to be sure, but it happened. And for the rest of the trip, at carefully chosen times and places, I tell Sally that – someday – she too will walk Striding Edge the way it should be walked. Such are the pleasures of hiking :-). The rest of the day (and the rest of the trip, and for that matter probably the rest of my life, because when am I ever going to out-hike Sally again?) was (will be) an anticlimax. A charming descent, yes, but from the highs of Striding Edge a descent nevertheless. We meet up with the other three in Patterdale at the White Lion Inn where we have dinner and stay the night. It is a charming old place, with excellent food, and, it seems, an all Eastern-European serving crew. Perhaps that’s why the food is so good. Summary:
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C2C: The Coast to Coast Hike