Climbing into the mist
Coniston Old Man is one of the classic ascents of the Lakes. In theory the route up through the old mine workings should have taken us 3 hours including some time to explore the quarry workings high up on the hillside.
My preference is to do a loop. The thought of retracing my steps feels like wasted time. So I planned a route that would take us straight up with a return via the escarpment and down onto the ridge into the copper mines. At this point I should admit that I’d never climbed Coniston and so had no prior knowledge.
It didn’t take us long to make the ascent into the mine workings. As we continued up through the mine workings had a nosey around what is surely an under appreciated historical site.
Soon we were close to the top and in thickening mist. As we scrambled on we started getting reports of conditions on the top from those who were already making their way down. It didn’t sound great. Zero visibility, high winds and rain. Arriving at the cairn that marks the summit of the Old Man of Coniston we decided to start heading down immediately. Following our pre-planned route.
Mistakes one and two
At this point I made my first two mistakes. Firstly given the conditions I should have turned around and headed down on the path we had come up. It was sheltered from the wind and known. But I was determined to do a loop and confident in my skills on the hill. I quickly followed up with my second mistake – failing to check the time.
Conditions meant visibility was poor meaning I wanted to avoid walking close to the edge of the escarpment, but worse I had no sense of how quickly we were moving. The wind making it feel as though we were moving slower then it turned out we were.
We started our descent, it didn’t take long to meet the Goat’s Hawse path. And if I’d timed it I would have realised that some time after we were passing the Levers Hawse path down towards Gill Cove – our planned route. Instead we wandered on into the mist and towards Swirl How, still confident that we were on track. After all there were other people around. By the time we got to Swirl How it was time to get off the hill. However, I couldn’t find the path. I found a path but it was the wrong one and headed off a treacherous ridge instead of off the hill.
And frankly I wasn’t sure that I was definitely on Swirl How. Not being keen to get too close to the edge given the wind direction I decided that the best thing we could do was head on towards Great Carrs. By this point there was no going back and at least if we headed Hell Gill Pike we could get down via West Side Edge.
The tramp down to Greenburn, and around Great Intake was against the clock and the light. In the end we made it back to Coniston with some some light in the sky and a sense of relieve. After all a quick 8km, 3 hour scoot up and down had taken over 6 hours and we had covered over 22km.
Mistakes made, lessons learned:
It was an OK day to test ourselves against the conditions, but I should have turned around once we had summited and not attempted the circular route I had planned. Change and adapt to the prevailing conditions.
Time and navigation errors. By not taking regular time checks and by not checking these against my expectations of where I thought I was versus reality on the ground I missed crucial features (way points) and lost confidence in where I was.
Finally gear. We had enough water and the correct clothes but given it was October I should also have had additional food (more than we had for the short up and down) and a head torch. These are things I typically do carry. Similarly I had not packed the emergency bivi. It’s always those occasions when you don’t have the gear that you need it.