Hartsop Dodd Horseshoe 25the Feb 2018

This walk was planned 24 hours in advance ... weather forecast was for cold and sunny, which was good enough

for me to open up my 2018 Wainwright account. On the off chance he would be interested I called Richard and although he hasn't done much walking recently he was up for it. We parked at Cow Bridge which is just of the route shown.  Despite it only being 7.5 miles it took us 6 hours !! The initial climb up the nose of Hartsop Dodd was steep as expected. When we hit the first snow slope Richard was struggling with his old boots which din't have much tread.

Top man despite the old boots

He put his micro spikes on after that !

There was then a steady climb up to Caudale Moor with lots of hard icy snow around the wall.

From there the drop down and up Theshwaite mouth was difficult and scary at times due to the steepness and the ice /snow. I must admit I was scared for a while until we got to the bottom. The climb up to Thornthwaite Crag was hard but straightforward.

We had a food break on the magnificent top of Thornthwaite Crag.From there we  carried onto Gray Crag which turned out to be a joy of easy high level walking with magnificent clear views of the High Street range and Hartsop Dodd to the left. Definitely earned after the traverse of Threshwaite Mouth.

Unfortunately, I brought my camera minus the SD card , so not at many pics as I would have liked. I used the internal memory and borrowed Richard's SD card for some shots.

264 Wainwrights done now. 50 to go. A memorable day in the glorious Lake District.

7.5 (hard) miles. OS OL 5