Stark warnings
9th February 2009While out on a trot from Langdale to Ambleside on Saturday, I spotted a stark notice on a gate. It was on a path leading towards the Langdale Pikes and issuing a strong message that ice axe and crampons were needed above 300 metres in height; I myself was staying low with plenty of hillside bereft of snow while the white stuff made itself plain to see at higher altitudes. Of course, there have been fatalities on the "Pikes" so the strong wording was not without good cause. It was also reminder of similar unfortunate outcomes in Wales and Scotland. I can’t say that I have heard of anything like this from Ireland but something tells that full winter conditions must be blanketing those hills too.
The trouble with official warnings is that we have seen so many that could be termed an overreaction that heretical thoughts begin to percolate into your consciousness not long after you have seen the warnings. Some issue shrill warnings without they being truly needed, acting in a manner akin to the shepherd boy who cried "Wolf!" in the Aesop’s fable. This time around, I am inclined to think that the "wolf" is real and have gotten to moderating my usual questioning. This is for a number of reasons. First, the warnings are coming from mountain rescue folk and they didn’t overreact to events around the time of the OMM in Cumbria when a deluge came from the heavens and caused raging roads to turn into rivers. The other chastening observation in support of that suspension is that there have been those serious accidents and fatalities.
Another factor in all of this is that we have been spoilt with the milder winters of late. Apart from the shorter days, the occasional spell of snow and ice or a storm, winter walking became perhaps no less accessible than at any other time of year. In contrast, this winter is a sharp reminder that what we have enjoyed of late isn’t always the case and preparedness for winter walking can be another matter entirely. The whiteness is attractive but there’s a certain "here be dragons" element lurking too, particularly with inexperienced folk being drawn out to enjoy the prettiness. That could be the reason behind the advice given by the head of the Lake District National Park last weekend, particularly with the school half-term holidays and their bringing more folk with many perhaps without the requisite equipment, knowledge, skills and experience (the LDNP is between a rock and a hard place: in these trying times, they need the visitors but safety remains vital too).
Speaking of experience, assessment of conditions is a big part of it and any disparity between those on high and those in the lowlands makes it tricky unless you have some experience of being up high in the first place. For instance, snow coverings among the hill country lining the Cheshire-Derbyshire boundary are measured in feet while those on the Cheshire plain are inches in thickness if they lie at all. Increasing the height differential can only exacerbate that sort of difference and entrap the unwary. Saying that, it doesn’t take much to realise that whitened hills look very different to the green valley bottoms with their icy patches due to paths having turned into stream beds; that was very typical of the Langdale that I encountered on Saturday. Mountains and hills do make their own weather and it seems that winter conditions bring that into sharp relief.
The warnings and the fatalities can make one feel that they are on the outside of a different world looking into it. They certainly challenge any perception of readiness for winter conditions and set you to thinking, particularly about those who have been left behind by those deaths. That certainly is the case for me but barriers should be overcome carefully rather than allowed to stop you in your tracks. Even so, the mountains won’t melt away overnight even if the snow does.
Update 2009-02-10: It now appears that winter conditions have gripped some of Ireland’s hills too. In fact, the Irish public service broadcaster RTÉ has a report on two men lost on Lugnaquila, Wicklow’s highest mountain with a height of above 3000 feet, after dropping their map in foggy conditions. They have been out all night and mountain rescue teams are searching for them but there is a glimmer of good news: mobile phone contact has been maintained throughout. Let’s hope it all ends well.
A useful discovery
19th January 2009There are times when you learned something new that you wonder why you didn’t find it before. My discovery is that I have in my possession a part of boots that take crampons, even if their maker recommends emergency use. The boots in question are the Scarpa ZG10’s that have featured on here a few times already; I think that I may be beginning to get a handle and making them fit me better, so long as laces don’t loosen, that is. Apparently, they are rated B0/B1 and that means that they can take flexible crampons like Grivel‘s G10 New Classic (classified as C1). The result of that revelation is that any barrier to a greater enjoyment of those ephemeral episodes when white wonderlands greet us has lowered just a little for me. For my tentative steps forward, it looks as if the Scarpas have a little more to offer, and I intend to treat the possibilities in a manner to acquiring a first SLR camera: there are advanced functions that allow you to grow and advance, but a spot of learning is in order first. I suppose that I need to watch that recently acquired BMC winter skills DVD before proceeding any further. I may not need new boots, but I need to know what I am doing with crampons before attempting to use them to avoid doing anything daft, overly adventurous or unsafe. A journey continues…
An imperfect rights of way network?
16th December 2008Access to the countryside has always been a contentious area and a recent piece of blundering of mine along a public footpath returned that very much to mind (I ended up straying away from where I should have been to earn some yelling from a passing gent atop a quad bike on a nearby road). Within the last decade, Scotland has got its very enlightened access legislation and a less extensive variant has made its appearance south of the border in England and Wales, with legal wrangles forcing up the cost of implementation of the latter.
Until these innovations, public rights of way did next to all the access backwork in England and Wales and the question as whether the network that has come into place over time is all that useful for the purposes of exploring the countryside. In a similar vein, Graham Wilson, in his book Macc and the Art of Long Distance Walking, comes up with some thoughts on the subject:
Many of these exist for reasons long since forgotten and to insist that the world and his wife can march through someone else’s back garden because a postman from Time Immemorial has had to take this route to deliver a letter to a neighbouring farm is as equally unreasonable as it is for us to be denied the right to walk in a straight line across rough country direct from the summit of Shutlingsloe to the hospitality of The Hanging Gate.
I must admit that I find it hard to improve on that well put sentiment from the time prior to the Countryside Rights of Way Act that has given us tracts of Open Access Land with all their limitations in size. It just seems to capture so much and very much fits in with my wonderment as whether we are using a network designed in another era and for another purpose for very different ends. To my mind, it seems that we are using paths and tracks that came into use to link up houses and their ilk to explore the countryside. Add to that the very modern need of privacy and security and path diversions come to life, adding to the complexity that was there in the first place and things become more tricky as you approach civilisation. All that’s needed is a momentary slip of concentration and the ungainly activity of map inspection and not always in the most opportune of places either.
That intricacy and complexity makes waymarking even more important and it’s not always up to scratch; even the best OS mapping cannot be expected to show every twist and turn of a path within a field with complete accuracy. With circular waymarks, the rotation of the arrow can confound if one is without the understanding that an arrow in the 2 o’clock position means that you are meant to take a sharp right! Apart from poor waymarking, other ways to make walkers a little unsure of themselves include the condition of stiles and the state of a path. Some areas do well on this and Cheshire would seem to be among them. Surprisingly, North Yorkshire is poor for waymarking away from its national parks while overgrown paths in North Wales are things that I have encountered a few times now. All of this doesn’t aid one’s sense of self-confidence if an unwelcoming soul were to be encountered (yes, the countryside is like anywhere and they surely exist there too). It seems that those spontaneous on the fly decisions to see where a right of way takes might be best replaced by a modicum of planning unless it’s an area that I already know.
The impression that starts to build from this is that we might need a simpler network of rights of way in place of the rag bag that we use now. What I wouldn’t want to see is a reduction in ease of access to any area, but diversions away from houses and farmyards would suit me better; I like my explorations to be uncontentious rather than appearing to be prying. However, I cannot see that scale of improvement happening because there are always other things that command the attentions of governments and local authorities and that is never more true than in these times of economic upheaval. Inertia probably rules anyway with a major push being needed to get anything like a path and bridleway reorganisation through; it took a huge effort to get the “Right to Roam” legislation implemented and I cannot see a government again confronting vested interests in the countryside quite like that for a while.
My conclusion from these ramblings? It sounds like making the best of what’s there is the sensible approach, sharpening those navigational skills along the way. My days of spontaneously following a tempting signpost might be best put behind me in place of some more advance planning and noting of field exits or wanderings in open country where few are likely to feel threatened or annoyed. As with everything, you always can learn more and I am open to the idea, with thoughts of perusing the Open Spaces Society’s book on rights of way coming to mind.
On readiness for winter walking
11th December 2008It’s winter again and I for one have come around to the notion that this time of year has much to offer those who enjoy the countryside. Shorter days and colder air are part and parcel of things in winter but cut your cloth according to your measure and you may begin to think that summer is overrated. From the photographic point of view, the golden light that abounds does yield results with a pleasing glow and the golden hours of dawn and dusk become more accessible too. A lot of my usual outdoors gear still remains useful but with extra warm clothing to keep out the cold and a working head torch for when walks broach the hours of darkness. Waiting for a bus or train home can be a cold business, especially since temperatures can and do plummet after dark, so my down jacket gets to see a lot of use.
The very mention of winter sends images of frost and snow into the mind but it isn’t always thus. In recent years, some winters have been so mild that one would be forgiven for thinking that we had been sold a forgery. As if to prove that colder winters still exist, last year and this one have seen good falls of snow in places. It’s almost as if there is a general oscillation between milder and colder winters going on and research carried out by the Met Office suggests a link with the El Nino cycle in the Pacific.
Without snow and ice, winter hiking involves negotiating wetter ground and getting back to civilisation before it gets too dark. Add in frozen ground and areas of normally soft ground become easier to cross, even if the feeling of boots not gaining purchase with the ground unnerves just a little. Otherwise, the landscape remains a familiar place but snow is another matter entirely with its ability to obscure details that are usually quiet obvious. While undoubtedly beautiful, it also presents new hazards like cornices, avalanches, drifts and blizzards for the explorer of hill country. In some ways, the door is shut on normal hillwalking with classic walks getting turned into winter mountaineering with all of its lingo. That’s a whole new arena with the various different types of snow and the various pieces of equipment like ice axes along with crampons and compatible boots.
That alien feel of the collected wisdom of exploring a frozen landscape is something that I find eerily alien with my being more accustomed to green places. The wilder places become more like what you find described in Robert Macfarlane’s Mountains of the Mind or Ranulph Fiennes’ Captain Scott. My usual outdoors haven has more in common with that of Damien Enright’s A Place Near Heaven: A Year in West Cork. That slim volume provided episodes of pleasant relief while I was following Fiennes’ tale of Antarctic adversity and I can recommend it.
My experience of what might be termed full winter conditions can be compared to standing on the threshold of that world where everything is covered in the white stuff. Until last weekend, treading on powder dry snow and avoiding slips on ice were more akin to what I previously encountered. I took matters a little further among the Howgill Fells while avoiding ice on the steep lower slopes and ploughing through deeper than I had met before when up higher. I got reminded of the need for crampons while ensure that I did not go beyond the capabilities of my boots.
When it comes to entering that world of the white stuff, I am facing something of a dilemma. Do I plan to expand my experience of handling snow and ice in the hills with winter skills courses and various pieces of equipment or do I inch forward and continue to develop an appreciation of the limitations of my skills and equipment, turning back when conditions look as if they are beyond me? Being more walker than mountaineer, the latter notion is where my inclinations lie but I have no desire to become another statistic or a news item that pads out a television or radio news bulletin.
Media sensationalism can go too far and this year’s OMM in Cumbria fell victim to this; it was never going to be helped by a few overreacting individuals and the torrents of rain that fell. Even so, those yarns can still be instructive. No one who has earned their outdoors spurs should be tackling Snowdon with failing light without the right equipment like two lads who were found on Crib Goch last winter so that’s more of a lesson for the masses but there remain ones for outdoors types. One that comes to mind is a student group with only one map between them getting separated in poor visibility while out in Highland Perthshire earlier this year. Then, there are reports of fatalities like those on Helvellyn and they can be very off-putting.
There’s something to be said for staying among the foothills on the threshold of that white world, reading and learning more all of the while. Articles like that put out on grough in recent days have their place and I wish that it was published before my weekend exertions. My preference to stay on the walking side of the walker/mountaineer divide and quote a certain Alfred Wainwright comes to mind:”You are not dicing with death. You are not making a technical excursion into space. You are going for a walk”. I can be corrected on the original context but what appears to be severe riposte has its own resonance for me. In a way, I suppose that it is telling me not to get technical mountaineering mixed up with my hiking but where elements of it are needed in order to stay safe, I feel that it would be foolish not to learn about them and use them in their own good time. This can be seen as another outdoors journey: getting out into that white world without going in beyond my depth and back again safely with no harm done. It’s not about conquering nature but rather to let nature help me to conquer the stresses and strains of modern life.
