Another walk from the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel that can be done without troubling one’s car. I set off across the fields through Stool End Farm and over the bridge to where the path to Red Tarn starts its long steep climb. Just before Red Tarn there is a path branches off to the left leading to Crinkle Crags. Just to do these would be a pleasant shortish day and may people go on and include an ascent of Bowfell to make it a little more challenging. I had a different plan to add a little extra to the simple Crinkle Crags walk which was to sweep up the associated Nuttalls. Not Pike o’ Blisco which I climbed rather recently (103) but Great Knott, the three Tops of Cold Pike and Little Stand as well as the four Nuttalls involved in traversing Crinkle Crags and Shelter Crags. Great Knott is very easy. You just keep going along the oath towards Crinkle Crags until it passes very near the summit which you make a short stroll out to visit. Finding one’s way across the three tops of Cold Pike in poor visibility would be tricky I guess but was easy enough today in clear weather. The main top when you found it is anyway hard to mistake a lovely rocky amphitheatre with a good cairn. The same cannot be said for the West Top where the top is marked by three stones on a lump of rock. The far flung little nodule of Far West Top has more of a cairn. I headed west from here and up grassy slopes onto the ridge between Crinkle Crags and Little Stand. There’s a faint path and it doesn’t take long to reach the ridge and walk along it to the summit cairn where a wonder view across to the Scafells opens up. Then north back up the ridge until eventually I rejoined the main Crinkle Crags path just before the ascent of the first Crinkle began in earnest.
Over this I went and down to the col before the main top where I was confronted with the famous “bad step”. This is eminently avoidable by a very clear path that heads off diagonally up right but I thought iI would give it a go. Really it is not so bad. You climb it using the big flake in the centre of the picture which provides first of all an extremely positive handhold and then a reassuringly large and secure foothold. The transition from the former employment of it to the latter is the only very slightly awkward move and is likely to induce an undignified noise from anyone much over 45. Really not hard, it might perhaps be a bit daunting in descent. That bit done, the rest was a stroll, up over the main top on Crinkle Two and then delightfully on over further crinkles, the two tops of Shelter Crags and easily down the lovely broad ridge of the Band.
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