13. Pen y Ghent, 3 peaks route to Lodge Hall and the Ribblehead road, Park (frigging) Fell, Ingleborough and back to Horton
Date: 15/02/09
Distance: 17.5 miles
Ascent/descent: 3,500ft
Route map
Time: 3 hours 28
It had been my original intention to saunter around the 3 peaks route this morning but, what with spending most of last night at Airdale A&E (stitches needed for my daughter who gashed her knee) and all the ice and snow on the tops, I decided to turn it into a 2 and a bit peaks run with a hack up Park Fell after Pen y Ghent and then a ridge run through a shit load of massively drifted and now slightly thawing snow to Ingleborough before cutting back to Horton via Sulber Nick. There were almost white out conditions in the low cloud and snow coming off of Pen y Ghent:
After that it was all a blurred mixture of ice, snow drifts, mud and oodles of standing water pretty much all the way to where the 3 peaks route meets the Ribblehead road. This believe it or not is the iced up pot hole just before Hull Pot - looks kind of cold for a dip....
Kind of muddy (and grimacing from the odd fall) by the time I got to the road after about 1 hour and 44 minutes:
Then it was the steep climb up to the ice and snow wastes of Park Fell and the ridge line from there to Ingleborough. Least said about this the better - it was either a wall to my right with huge snow drifts to wade through or stagger around or a wall to my left with even bigger drifts. You can't get the true sense of scale from this picture but this snow drift was shoulder height!
All in all Park Fell was bloody hard going (and must rate as a darn good stand in for practising running up Bleaklow in the high peak marathon) but once I'd got to Ingleborough and was on the track back to Horton the run became really enjoyable with mud up to the gun'oles to wade and trash through. Brilliant.
Reply With Quote