WALK A CLASSIC WINTER ROUND
JANUARY Coledale Round Lake District
There are two types of winter in Britain. There’s the type that most of the population experiences. Dark, grey, cold, damp, monotonous – the sort of relentlessly dismal conditions that have you pining for spring the second the clocks go back in October. And then there’s the type you find in our mountains, a transformation so extreme that the first time you climb out of a foggy valley and into that secret white world you’ll wonder why you’ve ever walked at any other time of year.
When you time winter conditions right – fresh snow beneath your boots, blazing sun above, cloud inversion spilling out of the valley – you’ll know what all the fuss is about. Those familiar hills and fells you’ve trodden so many times are replaced by mountains bristling with edge and menace. Clear footpaths vanish beneath featureless carpets of white, grassy hillsides become unstable snow slopes, rocky scrambles turn into graded winter climbs, descents become races against fast-approaching darkness. You carry extra tools in your pack and an extra weight in your mind, constantly checking fast-changing weather forecasts and assessing the safety of the shifting surface beneath your feet. If all of this sounds new to you, then it’s not time for a double-axed climb of Tower Ridge on Ben Nevis just yet. But if you want to get stuck into a proper winter hillwalk, taking in one of England’s great mountain viewpoints and ticking off six Wainwrights along the way, then we’ve got the route for you.
The Coledale Round is a Lakeland classic at any time of year, kicking off in an anticlockwise circuit from the village of Braithwaite with a steep pull up our Trail 100 mountain, Grisedale Pike. If you’ve been to Keswick, you know this peak. Its pointed summit cone is visible from miles around with four defined ridges coming together to form its shapely high point. The ascent is a bit of a thigh
burner, but from the top you’ll feel like you can pick out every major peak in this famous old National Park. And once you’re up, you’ll be staying high for the rest of the day, circling the head of a roadless valley, home to what was once the Lake District’s last working metal mine.
If you’re walking in winter, spare a thought for the hardy souls who used to work down below you at Force Crag Mine. The steep tracks winding down from mine entrance to valley bottom were considered too risky for trucks in icy conditions, so instead an aerial ropeway was rigged to transport materials, only for that to freeze up and fail in the depths of Cumbrian winter.
Hopefully you’ve got the message – it gets seriously cold up here. But pair your visit with the right forecast and you’ll eat up the terrain. The dramatic cliffs of Hopegill Head and Eel Crag pack a mountainous punch in the centre of the route, while the horseshoe’s southern edge rises and dips over Sail and Outerside before delivering you back to the roaring fires of Braithwaite’s inns. Winter walking doesn’t get much better than this.