The Lake District Adventure

I will now tell you a tale of great excitement and danger—all of it true—about my adventure in the Lake District. Let me begin on the quiet evening of my departure…

I packed for the Hiking Society’s first weekend journey quickly and efficiently—my bag was full of warm clothing and little else, because we’d been told it might snow where we were going. The Lake District is very close to Scotland, and judging from the pictures I could find online, full of craggy peaks and hills, and of course, lakes. We would be staying in a youth hostel in a village called Buttermere, which is situated right in the middle of the wilderness.

We met up in our usual spot at the university on Friday evening, and 14 of our group chose to ride in the minibus, while the remaining four took a car. Seeing as I had an unfavorable opinion of the minibus, I chose to ride in the car, which was NOT driven by the last nightmarish driver, of course (he’s since disappeared without a trace). My company was Ashley, the club prez; Annie, the officer whom I mentioned was Hagatha Twisty at the murder mystery party and Poison Ivy for Halloween; and Alex, the driver. Okay, maybe I should say more about Alex since the title of Driver is not very informative: Alex is a very tall Hiking Society regular, who has been with the club since at least the previous year, considering he and the officers are all on friendly terms. He’s into Reel Big Fish, the surfing society (though he seems grittier than your typical surfer type), and counts bacon as one of the food groups.

We piled our things into the car and had a very smooth four-and-a-half hour drive to Buttermere. It grew dark before we arrived, but I could make out the great silhouettes of the jagged hills that encased us on all sides as we took a steep, winding road up through the river valley. The car seemed to struggle a little bit on the steeper bits, but we made it okay to our destination. It was already quite chilly by this time, but the snow had not yet fallen.

The hostel was surprisingly nice for, well—a hostel. The rooms were warm; the sheets, duvet covers and pillowcases were all freshly washed; and breakfast was included in the cost of our stay. I had a peaceful first night, and woke up bright and early Saturday morning to prepare for the hike. My attire included a long-sleeve-t, a t-shirt over top, Jana’s amazingly warm fleece hoodie, my winter coat, two layers of gloves, and earmuffs on top—and a pair of tights, a pair of leggings, and a pair of jeans, with two pairs of socks and my hiking shoes on the bottom. These layers, I would later find, were all necessary to keep me warm throughout the proceeding adventure. My hiking shoes, which I had purchased for 10 pounds at a discount sporting goods store, were the most worrisome part of my kit—they were not properly waterproof, which I feared would be my downfall. But I persevered and had the brilliant idea of duct-taping over the cloth parts of my shoes, which proved to be 100% effective—very, very lucky for me—because, as it turns out, it had snowed the previous night.

Breakfast was buffet style, and I didn’t hesitate to load up on the carbohydrates. The journey was supposed to be roughly 10 miles up and down snowy, icy, mountainous hills and cliffs, and we knew it would be difficult going. From the hostel, the peaks loomed over us impressively, and they stretched as far as the eye could see in either direction. We took off around 9:30AM and expected to return around 4PM. Little did we know, not everything would go as planned…

We started out our usual cheery selves—there is a good-sized Chinese population among our ranks, who were particularly giddy and prone to snowball fights, though that might have been because they had all become friends very quickly, as tends to happen in a chummy society like ours. The sky was clear, the wind was not sharp, and we all headed down a path that would take us around a large lake and into the peaks.

Almost at once, and perhaps ominously, one member of our group slipped and fell flat on his back as we made our way down the icy road. Though we were repeatedly reminded to watch out for slippery patches, they were often quite inevitable. I was relieved that my cheap hiking trainers at least had fair traction, and I would like to let you all know now that I only slipped twice—which was a pretty miraculous achievement, as you will see later on. In fact, one of the girls was so prone to imbalance that she clung to Annie’s arm for a good part of the journey—mostly on account of her poor choice of footwear, which was only a pair of street shoes.

Once we crossed the Bridge of Treachery (I call it that because everything is symbolic on a hike such as this), the road became much more treacherous (see?). Our path took us up a long row of flat rocks, which we used as steps to climb up and up and up— these were unevenly spaced, and sometimes you needed to make a wide lunge for the next one, and they were all, of course, covered in about an inch of snow. We snaked our way, single file, for a long time—many of our group had to take short breaks, and we were all very sweaty by the time we reached a more level ground.

At this point, though very high up, we were still only about halfway to the peak. The ground became increasingly icy, as we traversed over frozen creeks and streams that fell into the valley from whence we came. We toed carefully around these streams, but one patch of ice was particularly tricky—if you were not careful in stepping over it, you would likely slip and fall straight over the edge of the cliff. As I trod around the patch and continued on, I heard a scrambling sound and a girl's gasp behind me. I turned around to see that one guy had slipped, and was hanging precariously down the cliff side!

He clung to a couple of small bushes on either side of the icy bank, and said in a collected, somewhat cheerful voice, “I’m fine, but I might need some help getting back up here.”

I made a motion to grab for his hand, but the others behind him beat me to it, and they pulled him back up to safety. We continued along until we reached a small, frozen lake that sat at the foot of the steepest climb yet. We took a short break here, and soldiered on. At first the climb was only very snowy and rocky, but it quickly became more challenging as the incline steepened. Our single file snaking became more hectic— we were advised to leave a meter between each other so that if somebody toppled backwards, they wouldn’t bring the whole society down with them. The path was icy, and it became near vertical the closer we got to the top. We all made comments about giving the Mountaineering Society a run for their money as we used large boulders to hoist ourselves through a crevice. After the crevice, the top was in sight, and we hurried to reach the relative plateau of the summit. Those ahead of me let out cries of achievement and I rushed to join them. We burst onto the top of the peak and could see out over the whole of the Lake District from our location. It was breathtakingly beautiful, and I will try to tag pictures on facebook as soon as others' put them up.

The club president informed us that we had climbed 807 meters up—that’s 2,647 feet, people. Let me spell that out for you: two-thousand, six-hundred and forty-seven feet. And that wasn’t even the beginning, as we would find out!

We spent most of the afternoon tramping up and down more hill-like areas at the top of the mountains. We crossed over about three more peaks, some with steep-ish inclines, but nothing compared to our first hurdle. But as the time grew later, after around 3 o’clock, the officers were becoming uneasy—we were not making as good time as we’d hoped, and we wouldn’t be able to follow our originally-planned descent path for fear of the sun setting before we hit the valley below. Our downward journey, of course, would be near impossible in the dark.

This is where it got really interesting: one member of our group, Scott, who’d been leading the way most of the time, knew these hills quite well. He proposed taking a shortcut down, and after the president consulted his map, decided a strategic shortcut would be best. We started our descent merrily, and went up and over a couple of the lower peaks. We followed a trail of markers set for hikers such as ourselves.

We emerged over a particular peak to see a zigzagging path of snow leading down to the next lower point. Those at the head of the group tried to follow the path of snow, since the grassy slopes on either side were too steep to walk down—but as they plunged ahead, they found it unbearably slippery. Every one of us lost our balance here. Many fell down and decided to sledge the rest of the way on their bums. I decided to step sideways down the hill, as I was in jeans and did not want to get wet. I made it without falling, but many of our number struggled to keep up at this point. Most were laughing and having a lot of fun careening down the snowy embankment, but that was before they hit the bottom—when the road got most challenging!

I was one of the first down, and as I looked over the last big peak, I could see far, far below a long stone wall that weaved all the way down the mountain. I should mention that the sun was approaching the horizon by now, and the rest of the way looked incredibly steep. Once we had all gathered at the bottom of the snow path, the club prez and Mountain Man Scott surveyed the ledge down, and determined that we needed to reach the stone wall, as it was a direct route to the valley.

“Okay, everyone,” the prez announced, “Be very careful here. One wrong move could have you tumbling into the abyss.”

Okay, he didn’t actually say that last bit, but that was the risk, and he did seriously warn us to take the next bit very carefully.

We were on a grassy patch of the peak, the leeward side, if you will. Amish went first—he was the fastest, as he is training to climb to Everest base camp, and he is in very good shape for scaling cliffs.

We were, of course, climbing down a cliff-like wall of grass. I am not even joking. Amish had to lay flat on his belly to pull himself along the weeds and onto a ledge of boulders, down which he nimbly climbed until he reached the next bit of level ground, several meters below. There was one girl in front of me, who lay on her belly as well, but she was having particularly greater trouble than Amish.

“What do I hold on to?” she fretted, turning in my direction. I looked for a handhold for her and caught sight of a rock in the middle of the grassy cliff face.

“Try that rock,” I suggested, pointing toward it. But instead of testing the rock to see if it was safe, the girl threw all her weight on it at once, and it instantly uprooted, and the girl and the rock went sliding down the cliff. The girl gave a shriek, Amish scrambled to grab her hand, and he helped her ungracefully down. I scaled the wall, weaved through the boulders, and continued to the next level down. Mountain Man Scott advised me to continue toward the stone wall, still so very far below.

I clambered down weeds peeking out of the snow, over rocks and down a steep and treacherous path. I looked back a few times to see if Scott was following, and as he kept nodding me on, I did not look back again for a long time. I methodically stooped and jumped, grabbing onto rocks and weeds—I imagined myself very adventurous at this point, and felt like a mountaineer as I moved deftly down, finding foot- and hand-holds swiftly and efficiently, thankful of my many childhood tree-climbing experiences. Before I knew it, I had lost the others, and I went over a small hill to look back for the group. The rest were like ants on the cliff face, most of them still at the top of the peak.

“Hey!” someone shouted. “Stay there!” I didn’t need telling—I hadn’t realized how far I’d gone. A couple minutes later, Scott emerged onto my hill.

“Thought we’d lost you,” he said. “You took that hill fast.”

A feeling of accomplishment swelled within me—yes, I had beaten that hill on which so many continued to struggle. I was like a mighty chimpanzee.

But dusk was approaching and we still had a long way to go. The club prez had told the youth hostel we’d be back by 4PM, but it was already four by this time. One girl had slipped on the dangerous cliff and hurt her leg, and others were ill-equipt to make the journey any faster. The prez made a split decision— three officers would remain with the struggling or injured members of the group and take the mountain at a slower pace, while a few of us carried on swiftly ahead with one officer, to try to keep the hostel from sending rescue crew out looking for us.

Our small group, we messengers, plunged onward and reached the stone wall. From there, we followed an uneven path, buried in snow, with hidden rocks jutting dangerously up from the hillside. We walked along a patch of trees and scaled one final slope, before we reached flat ground at last. The ground in front of us stretched out toward a farm, and as we hurried through the twilight, the snow reflecting a cold glow from the moon, we saw the dark outlines of dozens of sheep.

“The Sheep of Safe Journey,” I breathed aloud.

One sheep that had escaped onto our path was leading the way, before it ran into a fence and stopped.

“Here’s the Guide Sheep now, come to show us the way home,” I added, before it became startled and charged past up in the opposite direction, with insanity in its eyes.

We sauntered on until we reached The Cows to Hinder our Journey, which looked menacing and flicked their ears angrily as we passed. We found the road, and walked until we hit the hostel. We arrived back at around 5:30PM and well after dark. The hostel workers confided that they were starting to grow worried, but we assured them we were all fine. 20 minutes later, the rest of the group made it back.

“Is everyone okay?” Annie asked the prez quickly, as the group trudged, exhausted, up the stairs to their rooms.

“One girl fell and hit her knee,” Ashley responded. “It’ll make a pretty big bruise, but she’s okay. We’re all okay.”

That night, the officers made us heaping plates of macaroni and cheese, and we stuffed ourselves silly before calling it an early day. But that wasn’t the end of our adventure, as we would find out this (Sunday) morning.

It had snowed a little more overnight, but it was only about an inch deep on the road. The youth hostel workers warned, however, that the roads would be icy on the way out.

We started out okay. The minibus took the lead, with Mountain Man Scott driving, and the car followed behind. All of a sudden, we came to an incline, and the minibus slowed—the tires skidded, the wheels spun, but the bus started to inch its way down toward us. Without further ado, we leapt from the car and charged toward the minibus to push.

“Get out of the bus and help us!” we shouted at the people inside. Some of them were taking pictures.

The bus continued to slip, and Amish barged out the back door. The rest followed suit and 17 people nudged the minibus over the hill… but that was only the first one. We had to push the minibus up at least three more, all with increasing difficulty as our energy was slowly draining after each attempt.

Cars began to queue behind us. We finally got the minibus up the last large hill, and we decided to let Scott take it alone until he reached the main road, which would not be covered in ice. He revved the minibus and sped it up the road while the rest of the crew followed behind on foot. Scott let the momentum take the bus up and over a few more hills, a slightly less dangerous tactic without having a crowd of students in the back to worry about. Alex’s car had experienced similar trouble (Ashley, Annie and I heaved it over several hills, as well), so I also got out and walked so that Alex could drive at his own risk.

As the vehicles sped out of sight, we wondered about their luck. We came around a bend in the road a little while later to find Alex’s car stopped in the middle of the road.

“Everything okay?” Annie asked.

“Yeah, but I slid sideways,” Alex said. “See, those are my tracks.” He brandished his arm at tire tracks that led off the road, and there was a ditch carved into the muddy shoulder that had obviously been dug by spinning tires.

“I would have screamed like a little girl if I’d been in the car when that happened,” I said, matter-of-factly. So from then on I was more appreciative of the picturesque farm scenery as we walked the few more miles to the next town, where there was a cozy pub. We stopped there to have lunch, and then drove on home without any further trouble.

Thus concludes post #50! I know it was very long, but I hope it was exciting for you. That was definitely out longest and most challenging hike so far, and I was really proud of my achievement at the end. I actually very much enjoyed scaling those cliffs and pushing that minibus up those hills—and what kind of adventure would it have been if there were no effort involved, no danger?

I think this experience was one amazing adventure, and I hope our next weekend hike is just as exciting! Now I'm off to bed, after a thrilling and exhausting weekend!