Thursday - Helvellyn via Raise
Thursday brought a forecast for good weather, and so an early start was prompted for us to tackle Helvellyn. This walk was not going to be by the usual route most take via Striding Edge, but from the Western side near to where we were staying. The approach is via Sticks pass and then traverses the Northern spine of the range by Raise and Whiteside to Helvellyn Summit.
The route would begin from Stanah, just a few miles up the road from Bram Cragg farm, and we parked at the community hall arriving a little before 9am. Parking fee was £2 in the honesty box, which we were more than delighted to pay for a full days parking.
The route climbs through bracken quite steeply and quite relentless for a mile and a half or more before reaching Sticks Pass. Here an interchange of 4 paths allows travel to all points of the compass. We rested and our destination headed us South towards the summit of Raise.
There was still some low lying mist around, though quickly changing and moving, revealing the landscape.
After a short push uphill we were soon to the summit of Raise (2900ft) and took another well deserved rest.
Myself in silhouette reaching Raise summit - nice picture Susan!
From Raise we headed a similar distance again to Whiteside with a short descent and another short ascent.
Looking back from Whiteside Summit the path we had travelled.
From Whiteside we could see ahead a steep and rocky ascent up to Helvellyn Lower Man, see picture below.....
Nearly up Helvellyn Lower Man (3035ft)
From Helvellyn Lower Man, the going is then easy with a wide flat plateau leading to the summit cairn and shelter of Hevellyn itself.
The view from Helvellyn Lower Man down the path we came
Helvellyn Summit shelter (3116ft), and time for a rest and eats, very busy now with people reaching the summit from all directions.
Above: Some braver peeps tackling Swirral Edge
The broad flat summit of Helvellyn and cross-wall wind shelter.
Helvellyn means "mountain lake of the hunting ground".
Above: Striding edge, see the dots that are people!
Above: Looking down onto Swirral Edge
After a long rest, taking in the fantastic views and more eats we set off back to Helvellyn Lower Man, then continued along this path West rather than descending the way we came.
We had seen some mountain bikes at the summit (how hard is that, carrying bikes up much of the way). The bikes appeared again, though one chap ripped his tyre and went down, luckily not too near the edge!
Our route down headed with fair steepness and typical rockiness for about a mile.
Thirlmere reservoir was now in view.
The picture below shows the descent route looking back , quite steep and rocky.
We then headed off north west along a less distinct sheep track that was the white stones route.
Here, rather than continuing down, the path heads across the steep terrain taking us back towards Stanah. The path slowly descended, but then at a point we had to quickly descent to meet the final path. It was here we encountered some difficulties as the route down was steep and very far form obvious. After a few false turns we found a way through thick bracken but it was far from pleasant.
Finally we reached a decent path and near to ground level this took us back to the bottom of the Sticks Pass path we set off form that morning. The final mile was tiring but thankfully easier going.
We arrived back at the car park 18:30 having left 09:00, some 9.5 hrs earlier, a long tiring but satisfying day.
The view back up our descent route from the Swirls Car Park just further up the road.
Our Walk score: 8/10
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