Saturday, September 21, 2013

Falcon Crag

dancing on the Falcon Crag promontory

Well Jonathan wussed out of the Three Shires Fell Race today.  I think his marathon training has finally caught up with him.  We went for a short run this evening.  My plan was to extend the Walla Crag route we did yesterday but a wrong turn that we persisted with meant an alternative route was found.  We wound our way up steeply to the top of Falcon Crag.  We then headed down the path that I had planned to climb up.  2.5 miles all in all.  Jonathan took a monumental spill on wet rock - ouch!  Even though it looked like it happened in slow motion, I didn't manage to get a photo.

Walla Crag is to the left.

at the start of the steep ascent

slow worm
We took the usual path (same as yesterday) up to the footbridge over Car Gill.  On the other side of the bridge, we should have followed the path along the wall down for a bit but instead we went left up the slope.  We ended up on what are probably climbers paths as we very soon got to the rock face below Falcon Crag.  We scrambled up the side - hands and knees stuff, three points of contact and all that!  We managed to pick out a path that avoided the main rock face and went to the side of a deeper gully.  Once over the crest, the summit cairn of Falcon Crag was nearby.  From here we had the option of turning left to continue on to Walla Crag or right to take the path down.  We decided to head back down.  This was before Jonathan fell over but he was experiencing some sort of energy crisis that was only resolved with a pint of cider afterwards.  The bracken is still really high and it does a good job of hiding footpaths but we managed to find our way down and back to the car with only the aforementioned spill.

monument to Kate Beatham within the cairn.  I don't know who she is but she died young.  This view is from the top of Falcon Crag, across Derwent Water, towards Borrowdale.  Castle Crag (the smallest Wainwright) can be seen near the top left corner of the picture.

in the other direction, the woods around Walla Crag are on the right.  Cloud is skimming the top of Skiddaw.

and across the lake to Catbells with the scree slope of Barrow visible above St Herbert's Island - the scene of one of my favourite family adventures.

2.5 miles - big climb at the start.

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