A Snowy Morning on Blencathra

With: on my own
Weather: first thing snow/ice on roads in Threlkeld; low visibility; deep powdery snow on summit ridge; visibility cleared on descent
Where: Lake District, Northern Fells

Lonscale Fell Looking Impressive In The Snow

Blencathra is possibly my favourite mountain in the Lake District & this morning provided an opportunity to explore it in the snow, the intended route wasn't completed but more of this later. Getting up to the Blencathra Centre to park proved too much for the car so a start from Threlkeld was the next most convenient option, a short walk up the road and on to the fell just before the originally planned parking spot. Rather than root around for indistinct snow covered paths a general N.E. bearing   for Knowe Crags provided varied terrain from skitey, thin snow covered frozen ground to knee deep snow. Visibility grew steadily worse and was quite poor above about 300m, the climb was quite hard work this morning - need to get doing more!
Just short of Knowe Crags I bumped into Lee & Clare from Whitaugh Park and passed an enjoyable few minutes of Centre talk!
There wasn't much to see at all on the summit ridge - in fact nothing at all was visible from the top of the mountain! It was at this point that the morning went a little pear shaped - I realised that my mobile phone was no longer in my pocket!! A couple of kind folk tried calling it for me, it wasn't squirreled away anywhere in my bag so they let me use their 'phone to call in my change of route as I tried in vain to re-trace my steps in an effort to find it - no chance!
The only consolation was that the cloud lifted on the way down revealing some great views of the surrounding fells. An enjoyable but costly morning.

More of Lonscale Fell