Carlisle & District Rambling & Fellwalking Club

Walk & Event Reports

Saturday 14th June 2014

Special Walk

Pillar

Leader: Peter Flynn

Report by Peter Flynn

Photos by Lauren Sarasini & Fred Bell

When a group of four middle aged walkers tells us when we passed them by to tackle a steep downwards slope – “we were just waiting to see what you did”,  then either we must look really top notch mountaineers or else they were pretty desperate.  We managed to get down the slope without landing on top of each other in a great heap and when we looked back,  so did they,  so we must have given them some encouragement.  The walk was very much along the lines of the old cliché “two halves” and they were very different.  The approach,  up to Scarth Gap and down into Ennerdale,  then up to Black Sail pass was lovely with beautiful weather and excellent walking conditions.  The walk along the Corridor Route to Robinson’s Cairn was exciting, spectacular and  in parts needed considerable caution.  From the Cairn,  up the back of Pillar Rock,  watching a group of climbers very inexpertly tackling Slab and Notch,  was tremendous fun and the summit of Pillar was guarded by some quite steep, greasy and very vertical rock.  Of the six who took part,  including David’s son who is a rock climber rather than a fell walker,  four said that it was the best walk they had been on in the Lakes and Lauren asked why all A walks could not be like that.  (If we had access to the Alps,  the Urals and Patagonia each week then maybe they could.)  The walk itself took 8 hours and was particularly memorable for myself as we traced the route – from the top of Pillar Rock back to Gatesgarth – that I took one delightful Friday in October 42 years ago – on my own with a broken ankle and a selection of adjectives and interjections that have since made it into common parlance.

Peter