Circumambulating
Can walking around a mountain be even better than going up it? A tour of Lakeland legend, Great Gable, says yes. Hell, yes.
When going round beats going over.
DO YOU REMEMBER the last time you saw the top of your own head? No, nor do I. We’re not defined by that part of our bodies, so I often wonder why a mountain should be defined by its summit. It’s the sides and faces, all the wrinkles and saggy bits that hold the truth. Walking all the way around a mountain, rather than straight up to the top, is like giving it a great big hug.
Going around is nothing new. Think of the Tour Du Mont Blanc in the Alps, the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal, or Mount Kailash in Tibet. This 22,000ft peak is renowned in at least four religions and each year pilgrims set out to walk round the mountain. It’s a 32-mile circuit, at altitude and over rough terrain, and the really devout try and complete it in one day. Interestingly, Hindus and Buddhists go in a clockwise direction, while Jains and Bonpos go anticlockwise. And because of its sanctity, no climber has ever gone to its summit.
There’s a peak in the Lake District that’s particularly suited to circumambulation and that’s Great Gable. This great pyramid of rock finds space, even in the tight-packed crowd of Lakeland, to stand apart. Its faces sit squarely with the cardinal points. The north face, scarred by Gable Crag, looks sternly towards the Arctic. The east side, rising broadly from
Sty Head, has a gentler, friendlier feel and it’s no surprise one of the main summit routes heads up this way. ▶
The sunny south side has an unusually complex, rocky structure you’d normally see to the shadowy north, and the crags of White Napes roughen the west slope to complete the dramatic monolith. And the summit? Well, I won’t be bothering with that today.
Instead, I’m linking a series of high-level paths, including two traverses first forged by rockclimbers, to walk what’s known as the Gable Girdle. Alfred Wainwright wrote of it in his Pictorial Guide to the Western Fells: ‘The route lies between 1500’ and 2500’, with many ups and downs. There are rough places to negotiate and nasty scree to cross and climb, but no dangers or difficulties… one never has the feeling that the end is nigh’ He adds it’s suitable for ‘well-behaved women’ but nagging wives should be left behind, as ‘the journey demands and deserves concentration’.
Deciding where you’re going to start and end (because the two things are the same) is the first consideration, then which way you’re going to circle the peak. I’m opting for clockwise, starting on Gable’s eastern flank by the stretcher box at Sty Head. I’ve walked up here from Seathwaite at the bottom of Borrowdale, but I could just as easily have approached from Wasdale. The Mountain Rescue stretcher box is of course a humbling spot, for all that it represents. But more than that, it’s a great place to watch the comings and goings of hillfolk as paths split in all directions. Many walkers head off to do Scafell Pike via the Corridor Route, another great traverse. Fewer are bound for Lingmell although it’s the star of the show from this position. It’s a much underrated hill, and the abyss of Piers Gill at its feet is one of the greatest mountain spectacles in Britain.
As Yoda would say: start, we must. That backwards approach is apt; after all, we’re flipping things on their head by shunning the summit. A path rises diagonally over a ridge to cross from the east to the south face and rounding the corner, things happen straight away. I love this mountain and this walk couldn’t start in a better way. Kern Knotts sits waiting, a historic climbing crag that I’ll pass beneath. Below and beyond, the view opens up into the head of Wasdale, with a spider’s web of field walls snaring the base of the valley.
Just reaching the foot of Kern Knotts is ‘interesting’ and you will have to be comfortable on rough, rocky terrain. You won’t need to scramble, but you will need to be sure-footed, and at one point you’ll have to pass through a rock cleft. It’s good fun and makes you feel quite adventurous, until you look back across Lingmell Beck and see the vast tragedy that is Piers Gill. Humbled, I am.
The sky is cloudy today. It’s all high stuff, but this world of greys and greens is missing the drama sunshine brings. Now, mid-morning, I’d be bathed in warm light. It would follow me to the western flank, and then I’d tantalisingly lose it as I explored the northern starkness, and then as I reached the east again, long shadows would race to keep up with me. Light is beautiful, in all its glories, but it only shows you what it wants you to see. Today there are no shadowy gullies; all has been made even. There is no drama, but there are no secrets.
I continue along the south face, across the scree chute of Great Hell Gate to reach a three-way split in the path. Climbers take the top one directly to Napes Needle and Great Napes, the crags that loom large above you. The middle one leads to a highlevel traverse but, and this is a big but, it involves something called threading the needle, a scary set of scrambling moves that’s not for the faint-hearted or inexperienced. I’ve done lots of scrambling over the years, but this one still makes me edgy. The third option, the walker’s path, is exciting enough.
To the right the rock stacks vertically like the walls of a citadel, its formations individually named: Eagle’s Nest Ridge, Sphinx Ridge, Arrowhead Gully and the Dress Circle, where climbers perch to watch others scale Napes Needle. This pinnacle was first summited by Walter Parry Haskett Smith in June 1886; an ascent that many consider to mark the birth of British rock climbing. So many people have now tackled it – it’s ▶
“To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here’s where things grow.”
ROBERT M PIRSIG, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
something of a rite of passage for climbers – that the rock has worn smooth in places. Listen out for the chink of karabiners as you wander below, and look out for the angular profile of Sphinx Rock, which stares out across Cumbria as it has for millennia.
The loose rubble of Little Hell Gate marks the end of this climbers’ playground, as you near the southwestern corner of your journey. Passing beneath White Napes brings the whole of Wasdale into view, where Wast Water and its screes stretch away as if there were no end to the world’s mysteries (alas there is, and there’s a nuclear power station near it).
And round I go, onto Great Gable’s western flank. The path here is little more than a mountain goat track but it does the job, eventually meeting the crowds that spill from the summit of Great Gable down the north-west ridge to Beck Head. The pull up from the col is terrific for one very startling reason: the view of Kirk Fell and Ennerdale. No matter what kind of mission you’re on, you’ll stop to marvel at a mountain that has the exact shape of a KitKat Chunky, end on.
A nice pair of cairns marks the gateway to the north face. Say goodbye to all you hold dear, because you have arrived at the mountain’s Mordor. North faces are normally composed of steep rock. As they stay cold throughout winter, they’re not subject to the same daily freeze/thaw cycle that breaks the rocks up and creates the easier angles typical of southern slopes. Yet, strangely, this is the easiest of Gable’s faces to walk, with the most level and efficient of paths. You’re between 2300 and 2500 feet up, but it doesn’t feel that high, and the reassuring col of Windy Gap waits beyond, just around the widest part of Gable Crag. And just before you get there, the near crags stack up nicely with the background of Kirk Fell, Pillar and Ennerdale, once more giving your retinas something to linger over.
And from Windy Gap, Aaron Slack leads down to the south-east and, once low enough, a thin path takes me back to the stretcher box to complete my circumambulation. The compass has been walked, the cardinal points reached, and Great Gable shown the respect it deserves. More than that, you’ve seen what this mountain sees: what it stares at, day in, day out. Walking around is an act of appreciation of the landscape a mountain sits in, one that will take you to quiet places you’d never see with your eye set on the summit, and one you’ll find just as rewarding as getting to the top.
“Passing beneath White Napes brings the whole of Wasdale into view, where Wast Water and its screes stretch away as if there were no end to the world’s mysteries.”