This morning I woke up very excited as today was the day of my very first wild camp with my good walking buddy Richard. The plan was to camp on his favourite summit, High Stile. We parked the car near the church at Buttermere, donned our boots and made our way down past The Fish Inn towards the lakeside. The weather was glorious and there were good reflections on the lake as it was so still.
We started to make our way around the lakeside until we eventually came to Burtness wood, where we took a path to the right to start our ascent.
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| Buttermere and Fleetwith Pike |
As we were making our way up we spotted someone just ahead of us and Richard started to panic. It was quite late in the afternoon and he was worried that someone else was making their way to where we were wanting to pitch the tent. A bit further up and we lost sight of him and concentrated on filling our bottles up with some nice fresh water from the beck.
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| The Sheepbone Buttress on High Crag |
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| Buttermere |
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| Crummock Water |
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| Keswick in the distance to the right |
As we got nearer to the top we had to do a bit of a scramble up near Grey Crags. We started to wonder if the bloke we saw ahead of us before was camped up here so everything was crossed as we started to approach our camping spot. There was a huge sigh of relief when we saw that it was completely empty and we had the whole summit to ourselves.
By this time the sun was starting to go down so we started to pitch up and then put on some warmer layers before it got too cold. We then decided to have a walk around with the cameras to get some photos of the sun setting.
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| Crummock Water and Loweswater |
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| The Scafells |
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| Looking down to Ennerdale |
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| The summit cairn of High Stile in the distance |
After watching the sun go down, we made our way back to the tent and got the stove going for our tea. Shortly after our meal it was time to bed down for the night as it was now getting quite late.
The following morning we awoke around 6.30am to find that the horizon had a nice orange glow to it ready for the sunrise. It was time for us to get up and make the most of it.
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| The morning moon |
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| Sunrise over the Helvellyn range |
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| Sun shining on Red Pike |
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| High Stile summit cairn |
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| High Stile summit |
After spending an hour or so on the summit watching the sunrise, it was time to get the stove going for our breakfast. We found a lovely spot looking down to Buttermere and could've stayed here a lot longer but we still had to unpitch and pack everything away.
The plan for today was to walk across to High Crag and Haystacks before getting back down to Buttermere. As we started off quite late after breakfast we didn't have time to do Haystacks so we decided to just do High Crag. It turned out to be another glorious day with the sun beating down on us.
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| High Stile Ridge |
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| Buttermere |
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| Fleetwith Pike |
We eventually reached the summit of High Crag where you can get good views of Pillar, The Scafells and Grasmoor.
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| Grasmoor from High Crag |
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| Ennerdale |
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| Pillar from High Crag |
From High Crag we made our descent back towards Buttermere.
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| Hawk passing over Buttermere |
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| Buttermere reflections |
Once we got back to Buttermere it was off to the pub for a pint of coke. I absolutely loved this trip out to do my first wild camp. A big thank you to Richard for taking me up there.
8 miles and 3300 feet of ascent
What a great thing to do and something I need to get sorted. Excellent stuff and what a great guide in Ricardo. Well done :-)
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