A wonderful day today climbing Helvellyn by Striding Edge in winter conditions, we had a little of everything today, plenty of fresh snow, wind, sunshine and some great views.
After meeting at Glenridding this morning we drove up to the Helvellyn Youth Hostel at Greenside Mines to start todays walk. There was plenty of fresh snow on the fells this morning and as we got ready to head out the passing shower quickly cleared.
We were off by 10am and heading up the track by the mine buildings. We crossed the bridge over Glenridding Beck and took the track up alongside the beck towards Red Tarn Beck.
There were a few others heading up this morning, one pair that we kept passing all morning as we climbed through the snow towards Striding Edge and a larger group that seemed very under equipped for a day in the snow, several were sporting jeans.
After a few stops we were up the first steep section of the path alongside Red Tarn Beck by now we were walking in the snow, at first it was pretty slushy but as we climbed up towards Red Tarn it got better and better eventually a couple of inches of good snow, by now there was more snow falling.
At Red Tarn we took a left turn and headed up towards the 'Hole in the Wall' along the path here the wind got up and we had a few white outs.
Once we were at the 'Hole in the Wall' we turned up to the right following the ridge, although it was still a bit gusty up here the weather improved and we were soon getting our first really good views of the day as the cloud broke behind us giving us some great view over Birkhouse Moor and down towards Ullswater and across the valley towards the Far Eastern Fells.
As we climbed towards High Spying How there were also some good views ahead towards Striding Edge.
We took a short break just before climbing onto High Spying How and the start of Striding Edge, a quick bite to eat and to put on some snow goggles. Once up on High Spying How we crossed the first section of Striding Edge without too much trouble, we had to be careful as there was a fair coating of fresh powder on the edge covering up everything underneath, we were soon down off the first section of the edge and onto the second, the narrowest part of Striding Edge, the easiest ground today was generally on the right side of the edge, in the full blast of the wind, although as we got nearer to the steep eastern flank of Helvellyn the winds eased markedly.
We took our time along this section of Striding Edge but were soon onto easier ground and after a quick stop to catch our breath we were off again, climbing onto the broad top of the final section of Striding Edge, this flat top soon tapers down into a narrower ridge before a steep descent at the end and apart from a boot getting very firmly wedged in between two rocks (in quite an awkward position) we had no problems crossing the final section of the edge.
There was just the matter of the final climb up to the summit of Helvellyn to tackle now, the first section was easy enough, scrambling up a groove on the buttress and onto the final slope above.
The snow up this final climb was getting deeper and deeper, nothing to bad, just enough to make it very hard work in deep fresh powder snow, but as we reached the final twenty metres to the summit there was a huge amount of fresh snow accumulated, deeper than the length of my arm and axe together!
We very gingerly crossed this deep snow and were out on the summit plateau of Helvellyn, back into the biting winds, the summit plateau was almost bare of snow today, it had all been scoured and then dropped on the slopes we had just climbed, we pressed on up to the summit shelter to get a bit of shelter.
It was pretty chilly up here today so we didn't stop for too long, setting off past the summit cairn and then along to the trig point, we were soon at the cairn marking the start of the descent over Swirral Edge and after a quick look at what was down there we decided that we would head down this way as planned.
The first section of the descent looked a little icy so we stopped behind the cairn to put our crampons on before starting the descent over Swirral Edge.
The first section of Swirral Edge was pretty icy, but it soon turned into better snow, for a while the best snow we had seen all day as we dropped down around the rocky outcrops along the edge.
As we got lower down the edge the snow turned back to more powder again, quite a bit where it was settling on the southern side of the ridge out of the winds, we were soon down off the edge though and onto the path below.
We decided to head up onto Catstycam, but after a minute or two heading up to the path we caught a really heavy squally storm battering us from our left hand side, it was very quickly decided that Catstycam was not the preferred option anymore!
Instead we dropped down to the right of the ridge to rejoin the main path down towards Red Tarn following the path down onto the Red Tarn Beck path.
After a while we got to the point where the snow was getting a little wetter again and removed our crampons before descending the steeper sections towards Glenridding Beck.
Here we passed another under equipped group of lads, one in velcro trainers heading up very late in the day!
We were soon down at the bridge and following the path back alongside Glenridding Beck, there had been much more snow down here during the day, much of the soggy snow that we had seen on the way up this morning was replaced with crisper, deeper snow now and as we reached our cars by the Helvellyn Youth Hostel we saw that there was a fair coating of snow on them.
Despite a few adverse weather moments we had a great day climbing Helvellyn and Striding Edge in winter conditions we could have only dreamed of a few weeks ago with some stunning views between the showers.
