Late Skiddaw Snow After Work

Fri 7 May 2021

One Friday last year there was snow on the hills so, after work in Keswick, I decided I’d just blast up Skiddaw as it’s pretty unusual for him to be so full of snow in May!  Skiddaw is a pretty big undertaking to nip up after work so, unusually for me, I actually took the car up to Gale Road carpark and started from there – normally I’d call that cheating!

All photos:
my Olympus Trip35 film camera (which I often take to work in summer)

As stated above, I’d taken to taking my Olympus Trip35 film camera to work as I often do a hill after work and the Zenith is too big to cart to work and keep in my work bag.  I didn’t want to cart my digi-camera around as I neither like the camera nor the photos from it so the Olympus, as well as being a great quality camera, is very neat and handy but still film 🙂

The only problem this time was that, as I no longer have a light meter, I have to use the Olympus on automatic for the light settings but, in order to load the film (necessitating a couple of shutter presses while you load), you have to put the camera on f2.8 so you can press the shutter.  Unfortunately, I forgot to set it back to automatic and took nearly the whole film on f2.8 – I thought this would be a disaster on a snowy day but these actual shots came out fine.  Some of the rest of the film was a write-off.  Maybe I got away with it because it was quite late in the day when I was up there!

I keep my walking shoes in my car throughout summer plus a t-shirt so I can blast up the hills after work so, after a quick change in the carpark, I was off up the Jenkin Hill track at around 1700 hours.

High on Jenkin Hill shoulder, I reached the start of the snow and got the camera out for the rest of the walk.  I don’t carry a bag on the Lakes hills any more but the camera has its own nice little carry case which goes over my shoulder – unlike the Zenith SLR, it weighs nothing!

It was quite a nice, sunny evening but the sun was mostly hiding behind Skiddaw Little Man at this point…

The path up Little Man is steep and always very slippery in snow as it gets very hard packed – often there is little snow either side of the path but it’s not playing the game to avoid the path and trample the verges as it contributes to path-widening and further erosion so I don’t do it!

Strangely, the top and the descent from Little Man had no snow but I could see ahead there was plenty on Skiddaw himself!

For May snow, it was surprisingly deep across the col and along the summit ridge of Skiddaw and part of the ascent to the south summit – I’d say around 5 inches deep.  Luckily, the snow wasn’t wet but was just right and didn’t drop into the tops of my shoes much so my feet were staying reasonably dry, if a little cold (I don’t take socks to work, just my shoes)…

I found it great going up to the south summit and really enjoyed my snowy plod – I was going pretty fast and making great time…

plenty of snow on the summit ridge from south summit to the main summit

After stomping along the ridge to the north summit and back (I always think it’s compulsory to continue to the north summit after the main one), I started my descent.  It was great fun stomping back down the snow to the col where you then take to the back on the Jenkin Hill path behind Little Man.  For a while I was in the sun…

Finally, as you get into the shadow of Little Man, you have a long, very cold traverse out of the sun and, as in this case, in a blasting cold wind all the way back to the gate in the Lonscale Fence.  I went as fast as I could but was pretty frozen by the time I reached the sun at the fence again – I never look forward to this section as it’s almost always cold.  It was nice to warm up again on reaching the gate…

the cold and blasted bit!

Soon I had to say goodbye to the snow and continue my descent in the evening sun – Keswick below me in the next photo…

I zoomed happily back down the stony zig-zags and was soon crossing the little low hill before the carpark.

Back at the car, I saw I’d only been two and three-quarter hours – pretty good for a snowy after work blast up a big hill! 🙂

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