York Alpine Club Blog

It was the day after the club Christmas do, so we couldn't face the pre-dawn start that would be needed to get to anything much in the Lakes, so instead we decided on a speculative trip to the Dales. Plan A was to wander up to High Cup Nick, where there are apparently a couple of winter routes, but as we reached Appleby decided we couldn't be bothered with the massive 3 mile walk in, so turned round and headed for Wild Boar Fell instead.

We didn't really expect anything to be in, as it's relatively low (about 400m) and the main watercourses are fast flowing. So we were pleasantly surprised when we pulled into the layby and saw a small but perfectly formed ice fall about 30 seconds from the road.

Unfortunately there was no more above, but it made a pleasant little grade II warm up.

Next we wandered along towards Ais Gill. As expected, the lower falls were still very wet. The middle falls were much icier, but also much wetter.

Luckily Carmen spotted an icy chimney which provided an escape route, again about II/III.

The smaller upper falls looked feasible, in a wet sort of way, but fortunately access was barred by thin ice over deep water so we walked up the side instead.

Finally, we went for a quick look at Hell Gill on the other side of the road. The main falls looked promising from the road, but turned out to be very wet still, with the ice at the top seemingly not attached to the rock. Closer inspection showed that the ice in the middle wasn't attached to much either! But given this week's temperatures it may be climbable by now.

The continuation of Hell Gill further up the hill goes through a deep narrow slot canyon. We had a brief look from the top, and there was no sign of any ice at all down there – presumably it would take a much longer freeze to come into condition.

 

More photos here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 21st, 2010 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Climbing, Winter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.