November Floods

Saturday started off wet and I had work to do on the camper van in the afternoon. So I decided to have a look at the bridge situation in Workington. Both road bridges acroos the Derwent are out of action. There is a temporary foot bridge and coming shortly a temporary road bridge.

To get from the houses on the other side to the town at this side is about 16 miles.

The next bridge up was the cycle and footpath route across to town.

And finally the road bridge that did not collapse but has a serious sag and big chunk missing.

The following pictures show the bright side, the new foot crossing and the almost complete road crossing.

Helvellyn

It has taken a while to post this as I have had an upset stomach this week and not much interest. It looks like this could be the last of the deep snow as it has turned very mild this week and there has been considerable rain. So last weekend we parked at Dunmail Raise and accended Raise Beck. As we got higher the beck disappeared under the snow drifts.



Although milder than of late it felt very cold in a biting wind. We paused at the hause on 574m to photograph Grisedale Tarn before ascending straight up to the post on the end of Dollywaggon Pike.


The snow was deeper up here so we paused to don crampons and swap the trekkjng poles for ice axes. At one stage we were 'checked' by 2 mountain rescuers who were similarly attired. They mentioned seeing people sliding down hill on all fours wearing trainers.



We only stayed briefly at the summit as it was difficult to get out of the wind as the shelter was snowed over. The top had some cornices and the trig point was three quarters burried.



On the way back we had a closer look at the plateau edge and the views across to Fairfield.



We descended down the shallow gill on the south west of Dollywaggon, across Willie Wife Moor and down Reggle Knott. I have always found this a much easier descent than the zig zags down to Grizedale Tarn and the erroded path down Raise Beck.

One Week Later

A lot more snow had fallen on Friday and it seemed to be a nice day as I headed for the car park. A lower snow level meant I would not have as far to walk back to the car at the end of the day.

I put the skins on straight away and headed up the fell.




Unfortunately the snow was totally different. The week before it was dry and frosty but today it was deep, soft and wet. The weather closed in. At first it was possible to orient yourself as there were features above the snow.


Later after skiing on bearings I could not tell if I was skiing up or down. There were no features just white. Somewhere near the top of Stybarrow Dodd I decided to quit and just follow my ski tracks back down. Eventually I emerged from the clouds and sat on a rock to eat my sandwiches.


With a thin covering of snow and slush on the path it was possible to ski back to the Old Coach Road. It was just a short walk back to the car park and off to Keswick for coffee.