I joined the group on the Saturday morning. The majority had arrived the night before, but since my wife had had a baby only a few days earlier, I was understandably excused.
More information on Derwent Hill can be found here: www.derwenthill.co.uk/derwenthill/
The aim of the weekend was to improve or team skills, so we started with orienteering, which I have to admit we were very bad at. I am very glad we will have guides with us on the mountain. Next came some team games, and a challenge to build a tower of milk crates with four people stood on it. I am pleased to report that we broke the milk crate record with a tower of 20 crates high.
The Record Breaking Tower
The Eventual Collapse
On the Sunday we split the group and half of us did the Haystacks walk, it is a well known walk and will always be remembered as the chosen final resting place of Wainwright, the most well-known of all Lakeland guidebook writers.
Haystacks walk description taken from the Fell & Rock Climbing Club Of The English Lake District Limited. (http://www.frcc.co.uk/)
Haystacks walk: Length 8 Kilometers Highest point 597 metres
This was a stunning walk in very interesting conditions, rain, driving horizontal rain, hail and then fog, normal for the lakes at this time of year I here you say. As some of you may know this was the weekend before the serious floods in the lakes.
Climbing In The Mist
In the climb briefing the day before we had been talking about each taking treat we could share with the group on the mountain, i.e. a bag of jelly babies, some chocolate etc, we were very glad that our guide on the Haystacks walk had practiced this good idea as he produced a flask of hot chocolate while we posed on the summit for a photo.
The View From The Top
More next time on the training program for the New Year.
