Climbing Whernside

Why does it always rain at weekends? I appreciate some readers are not from the UK and get lovely sunshine daily. We are blessed with shitty weather for the most part unless it’s a weekday.

Last year I managed to conquer Pen-y-Ghent and Ingleborough, which are two or the Yorkshire Dales, Three Peaks. Whernside, the highest of the three was still on my climb list.

The rain had been coming down all weekend, and come Monday the sun blazed in the sky taunting me. Bollocks to this I said to @bingbabe, were are climbing Whernside today.

The hike commences at the Ribblesdale Aqueduct, something I wrote about long ago. While the weather was glorious in Lancashire, it was less so when we arrived and even looked like it was going to seriously come down.

Regardless we commenced this walk of attrition as that is really what it is. Whernside is not a picturesque mountain that dominates the scenery, it’s more of a gradual climb and does not photograph particularly well.

Passing the aqueduct, we started the long walk which goes around the mountain and not really up for several miles.

Despite the gloomy looking photographs, it was quite pleasant and not cold. You could either skip across these stones or use the footbridge.

I wanted to get closer to this waterfall, but that meant navigating through some boggy undergrowth. I missed most of it but felt a little seeping into my shoes.

Looking back on the route we took, I could see the path to nowhere. It was going to get longer still.

1.75 miles and we would be at the top, but there had not been much of an ascent as yet.

The path was starting to veer up more now and the clouds and mountain were getting blacker, yet the temperature was not dropping.

This was close to the top and the wind was blowing a frightening gale from right to left which was not doing my vertigo much good.

The drop was steep enough to injure but probably not kill and the wind was blowing toward it with ferocity. I was shitting myself taking some of the photographs and ended up with fingers on some of them.

The wind was not phasing @bingbabe in the least, and after hiking up Scafell Pike and Snowden recently, I’m not surprised.

I struggled to photograph the monument on the peak, the wind was so intense it was almost bowling me over.

The decent initially seemed quite easy. There was a wall to the right of us acting like a decent windbreak and I took a little time to enjoy the views of Ribblesdale and the valleys.

These large slabs have been airlifted on to the mountain and placed to make the walking easier for people like me.

We passed a couple on the way down who were struggling to climb down. The drops were starting to get steeper as we continued.

I find descending less scary than ascending for some reason. It seems strange that when I can see what's coming, vertigo hits me less though the wind is more a determining factor.

Reaching close to the bottom, the wind has all but faded away and I was feeling much more comfortable.

We needed to traverse through a few farms and country roads and couldn’t see the viaduct landmark at times.

All of these routes were public footpaths so there was no fear of angry farmers chasing us this day.

With the viaduct coming into view, I couldn't resist taking some more photographs of this wondrous piece of engineering. There are no longer steam engines running across the top but it's' still a business line for the diesel types.

As for me, well I’m all out of mountains now unless I reach out for the Lake District and its many peaks.

@bingbabe’s tale of Scafell Pike, getting lost and the stories I read about people falling to their deaths doesn’t really inspire me to have a go.

This is not an isolated incident and I have to question myself why I am doing this sometimes. I think my limit is around 2200 feet and anything in this 3000 feet range is above my limit.

Source

She’s talking to me of doing the notorious Striding Edge next. The prospect of that is terrifying to me.

If I ever dare to climb Helvellyn it will be using the easiest route and my view over this death trap will be just that, a purely visual one.

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