No photos from this weekend - too wet, well Saturday was not too bad but that was just a walk from the NT campsite to the Wasdale Head Inn for a pint of Dickie Doodle. However the BBC/Met Office forecasts (on Friday afternoon) for, "white cloud and occasional light showers" on Sunday, turned out by Saturday's forecast to be almost constant wind and persistant rain.
Sam and myself had an optimistic notion of doing the Climbers Traverse around the bottom of the Napes ridges, then "thread the needle", and possibly Sphinx Ridge. On the walk up to Styhead from Wasdale, we did see two people high above the mist, probably on the upper part of Sphinx Ridge.
Any remote hope we had of doing that was stopped as the rain continued and got heavier. At this point Scafell Pike was still visible - almost. So we continued to the stretcher box at Styhead with the idea of maybe climbing England's highest peak - a first for Sam.
However as we reached Styhead, the cloud base lowered, the wind increased and we got wetter! Some people may see it as a challenge, but I don't see the point in trudging through wind and rain with no appreciable view to end up in the mist by a trig point that could be anywhere.
So we didn't!
To make a walk of it, we went up past Sprinkling Tarn and briefly thought about heading for Bowfell but it was so grim we about turned and headed back to the Wasdale Head Inn for food and more Dickie Doodle!
