Pinnacle Ridge
After looking for some roadside parking in Patterdale, we found a little gravel space that we could use, since with the climber and student ethos the pay and display didn't seem very tempting. The day turned out to be a test of allot of new products, it was my first time trying out my Scarpa Charmoz, and Black Diamond Alpine Start that had been bought after last week's trip to Needle Sport, then my Black Diamond Speed Zip 33 that just literally arrived in the post as we were about to leave. Which meant I had to empty my Norrøna bag and repack before heading up the valley.
Making our way up the valley we could feel the weather picking up, and it looked like the dark clouds from the other side of the valley would roll in on us so we were prepared for an interesting time on the ridge. It's a known thing that finding the ridge is the crux of the whole thing. We definitely didn't choose the most common 'tactics' in finding the route, and just followed the path until we where underneath the face the ridge is on... From here we just walked up the steepening hill, with the odd stop checking the guide book until we could locate where the ridge was.
The ridge is very difficult to locate, but whilst moving up the hill we were able to locate it from the description in the guide book and the topo. As we went up we seen another party which kinda confirmed that we were heading in the right direction, and as we got to the bottom of the route we stopped for some food and to layer up, but also with the attention to let the other party gain some head way. We also got chatting to them quickly here, asking us if we had done it before and if we knew that this was the bottom.
We ended up starting up the scramble just before them, and as they roped up for the first section we made some headway just soloing until the 'pitched' climb. This first section consists of really large blocks that you scramble through and is super enjoyable (like the whole route) little start where you can move fast but enjoy what feels like alpine climbing. As we got to the climb, we quickly roped up with Ed leading the pitch. As there was three of us we offered to let the two others in front of us but luckily they were happy to wait for all three of us to head on as we didn't see them for the rest of the route. Ed did a solid job of the fun little climb, with massive cracks you can just wedge your boots in and the Charmoz really showed their strengths here.
We decided to short rope from the end of the climb to the Pinnacle, with Ed in the front then Harvey, and me at the end. Ed made excellent headway and set up a little belay with the pinnacle, which has two really cool edges you go across, from here I took the lead and down climbed where it says to abseil. When we all got down we got passed by a party of two soloing the route, so you can easily understand the amount of traffic this route gets in the summer if there are three parties on it on a fair weather Wednesday.
I took the lead until the end of the route where we stopped and ditched all the technical gear into our bags (which I'm so far super impressed by, but a further review will come once I get the chance to test it a bit more). From here we just walked to the summit and then back down to the car with Ed stopping for some cairn bashing to help bring the mountains back to what they were...
