Helvellyn and England's Lake District

In part because the forecasts called for better weather towards the end of my stay (not much better, it turned out), I made two preliminary hikes before tackling Helvellyn. On Day One, I climbed to the top of St. Sunday Crag (2,759’), which parallels Helvellyn to the south. The hike afforded long views across a deep valley to Striding Edge, one of two precipitous and sometimes deadly routes to Helvellyn’s summit.  Strong winds boiled mist over the summit as I approached.

Day Two involved a 13-mile loop in wind and rain to the top of Place Fell (2,156’). This hike in particular presented grand vistas of Ullswater and the plains beyond, patches of which were bathed in full sunshine, a scarce commodity in the Lake District.   The trail north led eventually to a steep descent to Ullswater, then a return along the lakeside trail that winds through forest, field and row upon row of foxglove.

Day Three and time for Helvellyn. The trail started on the western edge of Glenridding, climbed steadily and sharply before finally levelling off towards the Hole in the Wall, where impressive stone walls and other trails join to form a gateway to Striding Edge. From here, I saw a long line of people slowly snaking up the ridge so I opted for the other, less crowded route, a parallel ridge called Swirral Edge that rises to the west on the other side of a deep, tarn-filled hanging valley. After dropping down for a brief respite at Red Tarn, climbing up to Swirral Edge, following a false trail and having to backtrack a few hundred feet of elevation, I crossed over a small gap in Swirral’s knife-edge ridge and onto a narrow path, scrambling the rest of the way to the top of Helvellyn for splendid views of … well, not much, since the expansive summit was shrouded in dense cloud. Even so, there was a certain charm in seeing fellow hikers materialize from the mist and then vanish back into it. Perhaps this is how “the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn,” as Sir Walter Scott described it, should be experienced.  The 10-plus mile loop hike took six hours.

Helvellyn in the clouds. Striding Edge ridge (left) and Swirral Edge (right) lead to the top; Catstye Cam peak is in the right foreground

In the Literature

Helvellyn can send you back to your long-ago course in English lit. Britain’s poets of the 19th Century Romantic movement celebrated the Lake District in general, but Helvellyn occupied a special place in their works after an artist named Charles Gough hiking solo fell to his death from Striding Edge; three months later, a shepherd found the man’s dog still guarding the corpse. The 1805 event captured the British public’s imagination and inspired many poets. On the summit, a weather-beaten, lichen-splotched cairn marks the spot where Gough fell and quotes passages from powerful tributes by Sir Walter Scott and William Wordsworth to the dog’s fidelity to its master and the bleak grandeur of the mountain itself.

Incredible Walls

High stone walls – dry fences, the Brits call them – are solid, long and ubiquitous in the Lake District. Bordered by foxglove and other wildflowers, they climb straight up precipitous hillsides and continue on over ridges and hilltops, sectioning off the rugged land but somehow seeming a natural part of it. One scaled the approaches to Helvellyn all the way from Glenridding to the Hole in the Wall, a linear distance of two miles and an elevation gain of 2,000’. They testify to the immense labor and incredible hardiness of the shepherds and farmers who built them.

Fellow Hikers Make It Special

“Lakes and mountains beneath me gleamed misty and wide,” Walter Scott wrote of Helvellyn, and indeed the majestic landscapes of the Lake District are memorable. Still, the people I encountered along the way made the difference in these outings. Except for an occasional sheep – including one by the trail who watched with disdain as I passed by – I had St. Sunday crag to myself, at least on the way up. A few minutes after I got to the top, though, a middle-aged couple came up from the other side. “Ah,” the man exclaimed cheerfully in a German accent as gale-force winds smacked us in the face, “I luv zis English veather!” That turned out to be a pretty typical attitude for Lake District hikers. Sunshine is welcome but never expected; rain, wind, and cold mists swirling over the peaks are just an accepted part of the deal.

And there was Andy, a solo hiker from Wales who shared part of the hike up Place Fell before branching off to continue his coast-to-coast walk to raise funds for a village boy stricken with ALS. The two senior chaps who joined me where Andy left off, striding to the summit as prep for a half marathon the next week. The pair of teenagers hauling mountain bikes up Swirral Edge on Helvellyn (“Where,” I asked in dismay, “are you going to ride them down?”). The logistics executive and his wife, a piano teacher, looking worriedly at the prospect of descending from Helvellyn. “Stay here for a few minutes,” I encouraged them, “I think I have a longer but easier way down.” When I returned a while later from exploring the summit, there they were, waiting in the cold mist, almost certainly with declining faith that this Yankee stranger would actually come back to retrieve them. And down we went, chatting amiably about Europolitics or the place of piano instruction in English schools, occasionally glancing back up at Helvellyn, taking in the view north towards Ullswater or halting to admire in silence the long panorama westward across the fells and lakes, all the way, they said, to the Irish Sea.