With a thaw threatened for the weekend, we had one last chance to take advantage of the superb early winter conditions, so Carmen and I took Thursday off and headed for the Lake District after work on Wednesday. The A66 was shut (and had been since Saturday) so we took the long way round to Borrowdale, over 4 hours, via A59, A65, and M6, with a short detour to Penrith chippy.
When I'd phoned earlier that day to ask if the Rosthwaite campsite was open, the owners just laughed, I can't think why. All the facilities were frozen of course, but they let us pitch the tent free of charge (good site, must go back in the summer). It snowed lightly all night, and was still snowing when we got up, so we didn't hang around too long and were soon wading knee-deep snow towards the Raven Crag – home of the summer classic Corvus, and the winter classic Raven Crag Gully, our chosen route. It's a route that comes into condition more often than you might think for a crag at such low altitude, but more often than not has little ice and is therefore correspondingly harder. This year, it's been in what must have been 'normal' condition in years gone by!
The advantage of breaking trail was that it meant we were first on the route for a change. Another pair arrived as Carmen was starting the first pitch, and as I led the second another 6 turned up, so we'd timed it well!
There was a lot more ice than I've seen in most recent photos of the route, we'd found it in excellent condition – which had the advantage of breaking the grade closer to 3 than the 5 threatened in the guidebook for lean conditions.
Pitch 1, an easy warm-up on cruddy ice and powder-covered rock, led to the first main pitch, up a steep icy ramp. The next pitch repaid all the time spent thrutching in gritstone, as a wide icy offwidth led to a splendid ice chimney. Next was the Cave Pitch, described in Cold Climbs with mitts removed to make use of the rock holds, but today covered in thick ice, making for a fine steep pitch, though rather unnerving as the ice wasn't quite thick enough to take screws until after the hard bit!
After bringing Carmen up with the sort of belay best described as 'optimistic', she led the next pitch – a walk up snow to the foot of the final icefall. She obviously felt it wasn't hard enough, so continued up steep snow to a small ice cave part way up the pitch. The icefall pitch is supposed to be the crux, and is often described as the most beautiful in the Lake District. In the conditions we found, it was actually the easiest of the harder pitches, with just a short but well-protected hard step to get over the final lip. And the icicles that presumably contribute to its fabled beauty were long gone, victim to the countless climbers passing by over the last few weeks.
As I topped out, the light snow that had been falling all day, turned briefly to rain before stopping. The icicles on the sides of the gully were dripping. The thaw had begun. A quick descent through wet snow brought us back to the valley, where most of the previous night's snow has already gone, to leave green fields. As we drove off, it started to rain.
Winter's end?
Let's hope not. There's plenty of snow left higher up, waiting for the next freeze. And in any case, we've been spoiled this year – for the past few years (including the excellent ones of 2005 and 2006) winter didn't get properly under way until the end of February!
More photos here.