A Great Walk up St Sunday Crag – Snow and Sunshine
Following last week’s wonderful Place Fell Walk Emma, Morgan and I decided to make the most of the sunshine and head up St Sunday Crag. Here are the photos with the minimal words thrown in for good measure. Enjoy!
Morgan and I get a good view of St Sunday every morning on the early morning walk. Last Wednesday it was looking particularly appealing. So after doing “walking bus” for the school it was time to crack on..
We set off from Patterdale and decided to take the direct route up and down via the saddle rather than the standard route of heading up the Grisedale valley to Grisedale Tarn and then up. This was because a) we’re quite lazy and wanted the quickest route up and b) we figured we’d be in the sunshine for longer. The views back down to Ullswater on the way up just keep getting better and better the higher up you go…
You also get a pretty good view of our Lake District Cottages from the way up as well! The path up to the saddle is quite steep but the kind folk in the LDNP have made plenty of steps so it’s basically like walking up a very long and steep staircase. Once we reached the saddle and crossed onto the north facing side we saw our first snow although nothing to get too excited about at this stage…
As we headed towards the first ridge summit Morgan took the opportunity for some good ridge posing…
We decided to go off piste to detour onto the first summit and basically cos we wanted to walk in some real snow and head back into the sunshine…
The slightly annoying thing about St Sunday is that it’s actually a series of undulating ridges which means you think you’re there but every time you top one ridge you see another one looming ahead. Having walked it a few times before, mainly from the Fairfield side, I was well aware of this but as this was a new and frustrating experience for Emma! Luckily the weather and the views more than made up for it!
The snow got a little thicker and icier on the last summit climb so we donned our ice spikes just to be ont he safe side. This also meant we could follow the path rather than pick our way across patches of snow free fell…
Having not seen a soul on our ascent as we neared the real summit we could see some folk up there. Morgan, who likes to experience summit cairns on his own, soon sent them packing so that when we reached the top we had it all to ourselves….
Having sunbathed for a while and rehydrated ourselves and the hound it was time to descend…
All in all another grand day out in the Lake District, with some great views of Ullswater and Helvellyn, superb weather and of course wonderful company!
For more pictures of our adventures in the Lake District around Ullswater, Patterdale and Helvellyn, please follow Helvellyn on Twitter. You can also follow Ullswater on Facebook and Helvellyn on Facebook. If you want to come and stay in the Lake District why not choose one of our pet friendly Ullswater Cottages. Enjoy!
Awesome pictures and a great blog. Will be coming back often. Love the effect of the sun on some of these pics. I’ve always fancied Helvellyn in snow. Stephen 🙂 Keep up the good work.