Day IV - Wednesday 12 July 1978

An early start and a highly organised breakfast saw us out of the Youth Hostel at 9 am – but as we later discovered, so organised that we left our 4 hard boiled eggs for lunch behind us!

We cut across from the Hostel to the Hard Knott Pass – taking the shortest possible route – it was only half a mile anyway. then we climbed slowly up to the top of the Hard Knott – what a climb even for cars – a gradient of 1 in 3 in places. It was nice to sit on top at about 10 am. We had a long day in front of us, Slight side, Scafell, Scafell Pike and down to camp at Styhead Tarn.

The walk down from Hard Knott was very steep but very enjoyable with Harter Fell rising pathless on our right and the valley of the river Esk falling away in front of us. There were lovely green ferns on both sides and a Roman Fort half way down the pass.

We finally got to the point where we had to start climbing again- it was important to get on the right path from the start and although our route was not used very often we got on the right path ok. We took it nice and slow and for the first time to climb wasn’t quite so noticeable. After climbing to about 1,200 ft then the path levelled out somewhat and we walked across black green fell. We could see Slight Side (2,500 ft) towering up above us. However we made good progress and have we’re just beginning to climb it at lunchtime. After lunch we really attacked Slight Side and were up on top by 2.45.

After that we had most of the climbing done and we had about a mile to Scafell. The ground was very strong but a drink of blackcurrant half way across helped no end and we were on the top of Scafell, the second highest mountain in England (3,162 ft) by 4 pm.

Then we started to make our way to Scafell Pike. Unfortunately we discovered that the only way was down a steep scree run, which wasn’t really on with full packs. So plans were changed. We decided to camp in Wasdale – the second highest peak was enough for one day. We descended a, not so steep, but still difficult, scree-run and down into Wasdale stopping only to let Sheila and Paul have a shower in a waterfall. We pitched tents by a stream and cooked up a feed of vegetables, burgers and mash.

We set up the tents and after doing a little washing in the stream, we hit the sack.