Day four-lake district zig zag

Around 6:30am on top of Brendreth

“Clear skies + 700m altitude = freezing cold night”

After coffee, breakfast and packing away our walk started with a descent before climbing up to Green Gable. We had a perfect view of the place we hoped to camp later in the day, Styhead Tarn, just below Windy Gap. Our next climb was up to Great Gable, and going up was a lot easier than down. The route down was steep and rocky, made even harder by our packs. I’m not that good with heights, so I’m always pleased with myself when I do this kind of thing, but something harder was to come. We hiked up our final big hill, Kirk Fell and crossed its long and relatively flat plateau. We ended up looking down on a very steep and rocky descent, to the north of Kirkfell Crags. It looked like it shouldn’t have been a path, but we still decided to go down. It’s hard to describe the feeling of clambering down a slippery path with a massive drop on one side. Loose boulders were our main concern. There was definitely a point where a loose boulder could have rolled down on us and done some damage. But we made it down.

After that tricky descent, the rest of our route down to Wasdale Head was pretty easy, just a two hour track, the Black Sail Pass. By the time we neared the small village, I was so tired and my day long dreams of a pub meal had turned into slight delirium. I also wondered where I’d find the energy for the post pub hike to our final camp spot. Well, I found it in a burger, chips and sticky toffee pudding.

For our final nights camp we headed to Styhead Tarn. It got us to within 90 minutes of the car, and also happens to be another beautiful spot in the lakes. We arrived about 7pm, set the tent up and rested our legs. The weather was dreary, but my mind wasn’t. This has to have been one of the toughest hikes we’ve done, but it was amazing.

Blue circle=day four camp