Helvellyn Striding Edge Route Comments

When: 18th June 2010 Who: Dawn (29), David (39)and Thomas(17). Jake (11) was in Paris and Daniel(18) had been working late the night before. Daniel got up at 5am to come with us, had sausage barm and went back to bed exhausted (don’t blame him!) What happened: It was a toss up between walking and canoeing. We’d had difficulty getting hold of the roof rack so decided we’d go for a good walk instead. David had his OU exam earlier in the week and needed to blow the cobwebs away! After finally conquering Coniston a few months earlier we’d decided to push it further and go for Helvellyn. We got up at 4am to prepare and walk the dog. It took approx 2 hours to get sorted before setting off. It was a good time to set off as the roads were fairly quiet and the first part of the walk we had to ourselves. Driving up to Helvellyn coming through Patterdale we saw a strange creature waddling down the side of the road....it was a badger!! Cool eh! When we arrived at the car-park we decided it would be best to park under a tree so that the car would remain cool if the sun was ever to come out. The hilltops were still in quite dense cloud when we arrived which turned out to be quite a good thing as it meant we weren’t phased by seeing the top!! The map we had didn’t include instructions on how to get from the car-park to the beginning of the walk and the signposts were very vague. So, the start of the walk was not very well organised we felt. Also, we were surprised by how cloudy the summit was and were panicking about rain as we hadn’t taken any waterproofs with us. Toms shoes were too small for him and caused his feet to blister. The walk itself went very well. We had got to a point near the summit were the path was very precarious and seemed very dangerous. We made the decision to turn back and look for an alternative route. Fortunately we bumped into 2 very experienced walkers near the top who advised us that we were on the right route but advised going up and over the ridge ra