Forbidden sledging spot, high atop crags: Bow Fell’s Great Slab,
Remember the childhood excitement of being up in the loft? That’s how it feels to walk a climbers’ traverse – the private-feeling paths that carried crag-rats to their cliffs.
I’M NOT MUCH of a climber. I’ve done a bit over the years and I love the places it’s taken me, but I’ve always hated the restriction of ropes and the need for a climbing partner. That cool, spontaneous sport couldn’t actually be further from the truth; walking is the real way to freedom. But there’s a legacy climbers have left us walkers that’s worthy of attention. It’s the paths they’ve created over the years to get to their crags, adventurous routes called the climbers’ traverses.
There are three famous ones in the Lake District National Park. On Great Gable, a narrow path traverses the south face to Napes Needle, supposedly the site of the first ‘intentional’ rock climb. On Pillar’s north face, an adventurously winding traverse path travels the whole length of the crag, passing close to Pillar Rock on the way. The third is a peach. Bow Fell is a great mountain in its own right – add to that the skate park in the sky that is the Great Slab and the mountain really starts to smoulder. And the best way to the base of that slab is the climbers’ traverse, the third ingredient in a mountain recipe like no other.
The traverse on Bow Fell is where I find myself today. I’m high up on The Band, a dead slug of a ridge that flops into the Langdale valley. I’ve broken off the main path and stand on the cusp of what, if you look at an aerial image of Bow Fell, is the transition between light and dark, with the climbers’ traverse sliding off into the blackness of the north-east face. From this point, looking back down into Langdale, I realise how high up I am. The Langdale Pikes hold the valley to the left, Pike of Blisco mirrors them to the right, and the dale snakes away out of view. I feel I’m about to enter another world, and in a way I am.
The path slips over the ridge just at the base of the rocky south-east nose of Bow Fell. I can see crags ahead, linked by the tenuous thread of the traverse. I’m slightly nervous, nervous with anticipation. I like to explore the quieter parts of the mountains and Bow Fell’s position in the heart of Lakeland makes it popular, so I figure an early start might avoid the crowds. I want the traverse to myself, to be able to savour something of its historic atmosphere.
There’s a delight in having to pay attention to where your feet go. On one side, my left, the near vertical face of the mountain climbs impenetrably upward. To my right, the world drops away. It’s not with the same savage ambition as the rock to my left, but it’s enough of a sharpener. I’m feeling alive. I’m travelling horizontally, yet I’m high up on a mountain. The lack of uphill effort you need to put in on a traverse releases the pleasure side of your brain to come out to play. I’m feeling euphoric. A pair of ravens glide over from the summit, see me and can’t resist a closer look. Perched on a rock spike twenty feet above me, one ‘cronks’ to its partner as if to say ‘This one hasn’t got long, let’s keep an eye on him’.
Where scree isn’t spilling across the path, a mixture of rock and tenacious plants cling to the upward slope. Parsley fern is everywhere, along with upward growing truncheons of club moss. These are internationally rare, yet grow in abundance high up on our mountain sides.
It’s a view that’s as rich as any rainforest, just on a smaller scale, closer to the ground. Mosses, lichens, grasses and ferns want to soften the vertical rock; whenever I need to steady myself, there’s always something to grab. I’m sure, if I could see myself, I’d be leaning into the safety of the mountain.
My botanising has bored even the ravens and they’ve given up on me for the time being. It’s really this edge, the top line of the vegetation, that the traverse exploits. It wanders along the base of various smaller crags on its way to Bowfell Buttress, the destination of climbers dating back over 100 years. Looking ahead to that not-toodistant buttress, you can almost hear the sound of clinking metal work and picture the generations of mountaineers that must have visited it.
The path bulges around a stubborn outcrop, exposing my right foot to a big drop, before swinging back to firmly grip the wall of rock on my left, exploiting a narrow shelf of turf. It’s a skyscraper moment, like when you’re in a big city and walk past a tall building and look straight up to the sky and feel a dizziness rock you as the sky moves. It’s similar to looking down into the blackening depths of the sea while snorkelling off the coast of a Mediterranean island and realising everything below you is moving.
I’m standing with my front pressed against the rock face, looking upwards, and I get a lightbulb moment. I’m at the base of the Great Slab. It’s huge. Like that sentence was short, this thing is big – big enough to be its own mountain. With my ear almost pressed to the rock I can hear noises from far away, similar to how sound travels over water. I move a little further along to where a stream flows off the crag, over cushions of moss. I drink from it and thoroughly soak my post-lockdown mane of hair.
I’m distracted by a square cut gap in the band of volcanic tuff (rock) that I’m standing near. I know what that is. A look on the ground below the feature and sure enough, there’s the confirmation. There’s evidence of something that predates the climbers’ traverse by quite some time: prehistoric quarrying, thousands of years ago, when humans just like us were here interacting with this rock face. I’ve a nose for these things and it’s well and truly twitching.
As I pass the end of the slab, an obvious line of travel leads up by its side, keeping the steep, stillclimbing face to its right, with the Slab shooting away diagonally to the left and in front. But I’m not going to make the turn yet. I’m going to keep following the traverse right to the foot of Bowfell Buttress, to where the climbers would have gone. I’ve never done this extra little bit of the walk before, always impatiently heading up the shallow gully by the slab, like a rat up a drainpipe. The buttress is impressive and it seems only fitting to make the pilgrimage to the crag base. But what makes this little dog-leg really worthwhile is the view once you turn back towards the Great Slab. From this point I can see the traverse path coming impossibly over the shoulder, at its foot. A sense of ‘I did that’ washes over me. ▶
I retrace my steps to make the turn. There’s nothing difficult about climbing up alongside the Great Slab, and I stay tight to its right until I’m nearly at the top. Then I’m free, out on the flank of the Great Slab, with just the sun and the sky bearing down on me. I can never resist walking right out to the highest point of this geological gravestone. I can remember, back in the days when we all used to fly places, looking down on the Lake District from 30,000ft and being able to pick out this Great Slab.
Two walkers pass the top and I fall into conversation with them: mundane pleasantries mostly, but it feels good to talk with someone. The top of Bow Fell is a rock-strewn crown.
A true summit. There’s nothing easy about this one; it fits with the mountain, a tough nut, a climbers’ mountain. Next time you pass a jingly-jangly, ohso-cool climber, just think they have given us these airy walkways in the sky. And remember, they’ll get wise to the freedom of walking eventually.
“This is the Climbers’ Traverse and a joy to follow. The track runs below a line of cliffs until confronted by a huge rock buttress… The situation here is awe-inspiring. ”
ALFRED WAINWRIGHT IN FELLWALKING WITH WAINWRIGHT