Words & Photos Ian Battersby

February 01 2010

Yewbarrow battles valiantly with eminent neighbours like Sca Fell and Great Gable to turn the attentions of the Wasdale following. You’d think, as with tortoise versus hare, she wouldn’t stand a chance. At only 627m size isn’t going to do it, but what’s lacking in bulk is recompensed in form.

The approach along the western bank of Wast Water unveils her alluring flanks that fall from an inspiring apex to yield the perfect profile. On a calm day you get double the dose when she poses in a mirror of subdued Lakeland water. On such a day she seduces with ease.

All week the fells had been lashed with rain, but today broke free from grey beneath a miraculous shimmer of stars. I had twigged that lack of daylight hours might scupper tenuous plans to blast over all the fells from Yewbarrow to Sca Fell, but I also knew of many escape routes that would cater for any pace. This left me free to wander at will.

I began toiling up the steep, frosted nose of Yewbarrow, before the sun had touched her teetering top, ignoring a couple of paths that lure tentative explorers away. The route avoids a direct assault, flanking first, before the final ascent. It soon became clear that, coupled with the fragile beauty of the day, the landscape deserved a more considered approach.

I faced the blade-like drama of the ridge, staring down the opposite gully even before my feet had trampled its top. I scrambled across a notch and inhaled the view from the ridge terminus that reaches over Wast Water to the Irish Sea, before climbing to the top, always pausing to soak up panoramas of mountains with gullies and rocky outcrops filling the foreground. Great Gable’s Napes Ridge was delicately lit but the shadowy face of Sca Fell would surface only slowly as weak sun struggled through its low winter arc.

Just as I thought the sweat on Yewbarrow was done, gloved hands were forced onto cold rock in a long scramble down Stirrup Crag. Height is later regained in the climbing of Red Pike to Steeple, but don’t let the idle path ease you away from the magnificent cliffs of the eastern edge that lie just a little bit higher.

From Steeple to Looking Stead the view doubles as Ennerdale unfolds, but for me it was still the horde of hills that harass the head of Wasdale that had me hooked. I was mesmerised by the delicately lit scenery until the moon’s rise, through a horizon tingeing with pink, signalled a premature farewell to my precious sun. I escaped down Black Sail Pass to the comfort of the valley, where the moon’s bright reflection turned the darkness of Wast Water into another magical shimmer.

Distance: 11 miles/17km Ascent: 4593ft/1400m Time: 6-8 hours Start/finish: Parking below Yewbarrow (GR: NY 167068) Maps: Harvey 1:25,000 Superwalker (Lakeland West); Ordnance Survey Landranger sheet 89 (West Cumbria) Information: Keswick TIC, 017687 72645 Travel: Nearest rail to Irton Road station; nearest buses to Gosforth; Traveline: 0871 200 22 333, www.traveline.info

Technical Spec
Climb NE skirting left of Bell Rib to top of Yewbarrow. Continue to Stirrup Crag, which needs to be scrambled down (easy) to Dove Head. Climb NW to Red Pike, Scoat Fell and Steeple. Follow ridge NE to Pillar, then ESE to Black Sail Pass. Descend SW then S to Wasdale Head. Take road SW to parking area.