A Snowy Walk

On Monday the weather was forecast to be good & with snow on the higher peaks we just had to go and have a play in it. We decided to go up the last Wainwright for us in the Central book Ullscarf. We parked at Wythburn at the southern end of Thirlmere. This is looking up the valley we were to walk

Plenty of snow on top of the Helvellyn range

We walked up this frozen field

Crossing Wyth Burn beck which we would follow for much of the day

Nearly at the snow line

A waterfall on the beck

Looking back down where we have walked

And ahead where we were going

Crag poses on a patch on snow

We then have about a mile of relatively flat walk. The map calls it The Bog & even at these sub zero temperatures it lived up to its name!.

Ullscarf comes into view it is the very white fell to the right

Looking back again at where we had walked

Now we are really getting into the white stuff

Nethermost Pike in the distance

Ullscarfs summit is behind this

For once we can talk about where Crag's nose has been

The footpath carries on up the valley & then meets up with another path which takes you to the summit. Karen had the good idea that we should just head straight for the summit up a very steep bank

In 260m of distance you gain 130m of elevation. That's a 1 in 2 in old money.

Andy wasn't too impressed, Crag however had great fun using his nose to make snow roll down the bank & then chase after it... nutter with too much energy

Eventually the steep slope starts to level out

We were about 20mins from the summit, but as you can see the cloud was starting to gather & cover some of the fells to the west & it looked like it could snow. We made the decision we were going to add 40mins to the walk & the weather could be quite different then. We had also decided to take the longer route back

Crag up to his knees in snow

Ullscarf summit, we will get to it another day

We then walked along the ridge to Greenup Edge

A very frozen tarn

Just stunning views up here

Looking down on the valley floor that we will be walking on again soon

This descent is steep but nothing as bad as our route up

Everywhere beautiful & white

A last look at Ullscarf

We were the only car in the car park when we arrived, also when we left. We saw one person on another summit, but didn't pass a sole all day.

We had said we would dedicate the summit to Bess but as we didn't get there it's the walk instead. It had the three main ingredients that made a great walk for her:

1) SNOW

2) WATER

3) A TASTY EGG ROLL AT LUNCHTIME