Hannah’s First Mountain

All the training and the long distance walking covering the Jurassic Way for Hannah has led to this point, summit day for Skiddaw.

You may recall from an earlier blog, that Hannah has never climbed a mountain and challenged herself to climb the 4th highest in England for charity; Dementia Uk.

We set off from Northamptonshire about 8.30am, zooming down up the M6 making good timing. By 12.30 our were bags fastened, walking boots tied and we started our ascent.

The weather was cloudy with sunny spells and fairly windy, not too bad considering the forecast was rain today.

Our good timings continued as we made our way up the dreaded steep zigzag section that puts you on the run up to ‘Little Man’. We encountered a few brief rain showers, nothing to dampen our spirits.

The path gradually gets steeper as you summit ‘Little Man’ nothing we couldn’t handle, however as soon as we got to the top, we were hit with gale force winds, winds we were protected against as the path runs the North East side of the mountain.

We and fellow walkers had to sit low to the ground and hold on to the rocks to stop us being blown over.

The path dips down along a ridge and up again to Skiddaw. The wind was blowing with such force the clouds we speeding by like race cars. It was too dangerous to take this path, and the other walkers had the same idea.

There is another route that follows a path on the North East side of Skiddaw giving protection from the wind, not ready to give up, we back tracked to this path and attempted the summit. But nether the less, Hannah had summited her first mountain, ‘Little Man’!

The plan seemed to be working, soon we were ascending Skiddaw. The top was in cloud cover but didn’t look daunting. We reached the cairn that marks shallow rise to the true summit.

Bang, the winds hit us again, the true summit a mere 100m away, but the weather worsened. It started to sleet! This, coupled with the gale force winds that had us clinging to the mountain top, forced us to turn back.

For the sake of getting an extra 3m higher to the stone marker wasn’t worth taking flying lessons. If you doubt us, see the below video!

We begrudgingly began our descent in the driving rain. There were a couple of walkers heading up that we warned of the conditions, but they wanted to see for themselves.

Once we got to the bottom of the dreaded zigzag section the clouds cleared and the sun came out. We couldn’t believe it! However looking back up you could still see the clouds speeding over the summit. It may be pleasant now but the winds certainly hadn’t stopped.

Once we dried off a celebratory drink or two was in order. So a pub crawl around Keswick ensued. We also found out after speaking to some friends, that the mountain rescue team, find Skiddaw the worst for people and dogs being blown off from the winds!

So congratulations to Hannah for conquering Skiddaw in some of the most horrendous conditions. The current total for Dementia UK is £840!