It's March, the forecast is for summit temperatures in low single figures, so where would be a good destination for the weekend?
After a few minutes' thought we hit on the obvious answer – Pillar Rock a north-facing crag at around 750m, and one of the remotest in the Lake District.
So having somehow squeezed climbing kit, camping gear, and two bikes into the back of the car, we duly arrived in Ennerdale on Friday night. The next morning started well, with clear blue skies, but on the 4.5 mile cycle up the valley it began to cloud over. As we approached the crag, a light but bitter wind arrived to complete the picture.
After much dithering about what to do, we eventually decided to stick with Plan A and duly arrived at the foot of Rib & Slab Climb (HS ***), one of the pair of Pillar routes in Classic Rock. A bit more dithering later, and having donned 5 layers of clothes against the cold, Rob set off on the first, uninviting pitch, a short traverse followed by a steep dirty-looking groove.
In the event the pitch was much better than it looked, taking the clean rib next to the groove. The next pitch was mine. The tricky starting moves didn't seem hard enough, so I climbed up and down several times until I'd lost all feeling in my fingers and toes before finally committing. When I'd recovered from hot-aches in my toes, I brought Rob up as the sun at last made a brief appearance.
He quickly despatched the next pitch, a fine unlikely-looking traverse into nowhere, but the holds kept appearing when needed. I took the last pitch, another short traverse and then straight up a fantastically rough slab to the top.
Some more dithering followed as we decided how best to descend, in the end we opted for an abseil into the Jordan Gap, followed by an exposed scramble to the top of Pisgah, which we later discovered to be Pisgah West Traverse (Mod). A nasty scree descent down Western Gully led back to the rucksacks.
We now dithered some more about the next route to do. South West Climb looked excellent, if unlikely at MVS 4b, but the cloud and cold breeze had returned and we didn't fancy an epic, so plumped instead for New West (VDiff ***), the other Classic Rock route on Pillar. We'd both done it before, but it's worth repeating. An excellent route in 4 pitches, including two more fantastic exposed traverses. Abseil – scramble – Pisgah – gully then back down to the bikes and a quick half hour down hill got us back to the car.
The next day we dithered briefly before deciding on something south-facing, so to make the most of being in Ennerdale we went for a look at the seldom-visited crags on the Ennerdale face of High Stile. A shorter cycle to just past the Ennerdale YH was followed by a steep slog uphill followed by a long traverse to the diminutive crag of The Knorrs. A spot of sunbathing was interrupted by some badly placed clouds, so there was no option but to climb something. I started with the excellent traditional chimney of Squeeze Box (S+ *), surprisingly clean but a bit runout, then Rob led Short Change (HS-), poorly protected and quite tricky, even on the blunt end it felt closer to MVS 4b.
Next we traversed to the main crag, Raven Crag High Stile. Rob started, leading the excellent line of Butterfly Crack (S+ **) – a potential 3-star route, but unfortunately very dirty with some suspect rock – would benefit from more traffic, which it's unlikely to get! I finished up with Outside Edge (VDiff *), again very dirty, with a boulder-problem start followed by easier but poorly protected climbing with a 20m runout to finish. There are some fine-looking harder routes up here as well, including Emperor (E1 5b ***), Painted Lady (E3 5c ***), and Alpine Ringlet (E4 5c ***), but all looked even dirtier than what we climbed.
As we reached the valley the weather started to improve rapidly, the dense haze that had hidden the hills for much of the day cleared, and by the time we started the drive home the whole of the Lakes were bathed in sunshine. C'est la vie!
An excellent trip, not the best of weather but far from the worst, and apart from one group of walkers who mistakenly followed us on Sunday as we traversed towards the crag, we didn't see a soul on the hills all weekend. Great wild-camping too, somewhere to go back to (but could be midgy in summer). And enough routes on Pillar to keep us busy for dozens more visits…
