A truly wild day today climbing Scafell Pike from Wasdale Head and taking in the summit of Lingmell on the descent.
We set off from Wasdale Head at 10am and climbed the path across the foot of Lingmell Breast to meet the main path up by Lingmell Gill, with the summit of Scafell Pike in sight, the gill was pretty full today and we had to make a slight detour upstream to get across with dryish feet!
Once across Lingmell Gill we followed the path up Brown Tongue, climbing very quickly to Hollow Stones, the wind today was very strong, and at Hollow Stones we caught our first shower of the day, the wind here was on our backs though so it wasn't too bad.
We crossed Hollow Stones and were soon up at Lingmell Col, turning up to the right on the final climb up to the summit of Scafell Pike, the wind up this final slope was getting very strong and gusty, making progress very difficult at times, but as we reached the summit the wind eased and the summit of Scafell Pike was actually the calmest place of the day.
We didn't stop too long on the summit, it was pretty cold today and there had been no views since Lingmell Coll so we decided to descend, dropping back to Lingmell Coll and into the wind, crossing the Col to the summit of Lingmell.
The final pull up to the summit was straight into the wind and this made the going particularly hard, but we were soon on the summit of Lingmell and stopping for a quick lunch stop behind the summit cairn.
We descended the Lingmell Breast route back towards Wasdale, once over the rocky section below the summit this is a really nice grassy slope, except for a short loose section in the middle, but we were soon out of the cloud with some wonderful views down over the Wasdale Valley and Wastwater, and after a few photo stops we continued down Lingmell Breast crossing the ladder stile to meet the path leading back to Wasdale Head.
