The Lake Landers: Bowscale Fell & Souther Fell

Today was again forecast to be nice & with no pressing National Park work decided to head over to Mungrisdale to complete two more Wainwright Fells.

The first fell is behind this mound (The Tongue), our route was to skirt its left hand side before climbing up behind it.

Looking back towards Mungrisdale as we make our way around The Tongue

Looking towards Bannerdale Crags

We now have the steep climb up the bank. The weather had been forecast to be sunny this morning with cloud coming in later. It hadn't been very sunny upto this point so we still had fleeces & trousers on, but decided now was the time to change down to shorts & lose the fleeces (think Crag is fly catching!)

However it starts to look rather dark as we climb up

But the clouds quickly start to disperse & Blencathra comes into view over Bannerdale Crags

We were really surprised to still see snow up here, the black dot in the larger patch is zoomed in on in the next picture.

Yes Crag has run all the way over there to play in it, the marks behind him are where he was sliding down & having great fun

At the snowline we cut off to the right to reach Bowscale Fell (702m), still warm enough for shorts & t-shirts (just!!). Wainwright describes this route as "the easiest route to any summit in Lakeland over 2000ft". It was nearly 500m of ascent but AW was right it didn't feel that hard.

We retraced our steps, but instead of heading back to the snow headed for the col between Bannerdale Crags & Blencathra

Zooming in on Sharp Edge, you can see walkers heading up

Looking down the valley where we would walk to the start of the climb up Souther Fell

Two groups of two on Sharp Edge

A popular route up Blencathra along this ridge, most of the other walkers we saw in the valley we heading up that way.

Sharp Edge as we come further down the valley

Wainwright draws the bridges on River Glenderamackin & although todays bridge looks identical it is obviously newer, we think the bridge he drew maybe at the bottom of the picture

Wainwright also devotes a page to the River Glenderamackin & how remarkable the course of it was to become a Lakeland River rather than flow into the Eden Valley. The source is at the upper left hand cross & to get to the second cross it has a very convoluted route around Souther Fell. He finishes the piece "An ambition has been realised, but so nearly wasn't!"

A mucky pup starting to look a little tired