A truly wonderful day today climbing High Street from Hartsop, near Patterdale. Plenty of good snow on the high tops, added to that we had the luxury of light winds and blue skies for much of the day!
We set off from Hartsop at 10am and headed up the track by Hayeswater Gill, crossing the bridge and taking the track traversing the northern slopes of Gray Crag to climb to the dam at the end of Hayeswater.
There was some cloud on the tops at the moment but there was also plenty of blue skies around, we were hopeful that we would get some views from the tops today.
We crossed the wooden footbridge just below Hayeswater and took the path up the steep slope here towards The Knott. After a few rests we were up the steepest part of the climb and joining the path from Patterdale and Angle Tarn.
The views were great from up here, there was some cloud still clinging to the high tops around High Street but there were also tops sticking through the cloud and occasionally there was a great view past Rest Dodd and across the Martindale Valley.
There was a little snow on the ground now, quite deep in places, but unlike yesterday when it was damp until we were pretty high it was quite well frozen, there were even patches of ice between the snow today. There was a good crust on the snow, but occasionally it wasn't strong enough to take our weight.
As we climbed up the side of The Knott the snow got deeper and deeper and as we looked back towards Rest Dodd we were rewarded with a few glimpses of Brocken Spectres.
As we climbed through the deep snow to the summit of The Knott we were rewarded with the best Brocken Spectres of the day, looking back down the slope from near the summit cairn, we didn't have the best of angles today to get the perfect Brocken Spectre though.
The views from The Knott were great, the top of High Raise was breaking through the cloud ahead of us and there were some wonderful views across to the Helvellyn and Fairfield ranges to the west.
We pressed on in bright sunshine as we followed the wall south across the Straits of Riggindale. There was a good view down Riggindale to Haweswater. There was quite a cornice building up on the eastern side of the ridge today, we kept well back from the edge and followed the line of the Roman Road as it climbed towards the summit of High Street.
As we got closer to the summit the snow started to get firmer and firmer, it was quite icy as we crossed the flat summit plateau to the Trig Point on the top of High Street.
There wasn't much shelter behind the wall today, the snow was pretty deep on either side, so we decided to press on and take a lunch stop behind the wall on Thornthwaite Crag today.
As we left the summit of High Street the cloud started to blow in across the top of Thornthwaite Crag and we were soon in thick cloud as we crossed the flat plateau to the south of High Street. We were soon climbing the short slope towards the top of Thornthwaite Crag and almost out of nowhere the pillar on the summit was looming out of the cloud.
There was plenty of shelter from the breeze behind the wall at the top today, but unfortunately there were no views to be seen today, we took a good lunch break behind the wall hoping that the clouds would break and give us the wonderful view down towards Windermere, but the cloud never quite broke for us. We had been spoilt though on the climb up to High Street.
After lunch we followed the ridge down to the north, as we descended a little the cloud quickly broke again, at first giving us a few glimpses back across the valley towards the summit of High Street before clearing almost completely and giving us some wonderful views across the top of Pasture Bottom to Raven Crag and Caudale Moor and further west towards St Sundays Crag and Fairfield.
We were soon down onto the summit of Gray Crag, our final top of the day and descending it's northern ridge, the first section of this was holding quite a lot of snow in places but as we got down to the steeper slopes below there was no snow left and we were soon down onto the grassy slopes bringing us back down onto the track above Hayeswater Gill and down onto the track back into Hartsop.
A wonderful day on the High Street fells with great company.
