Recce of Bob Graham Round leg 3 Dunmail Raise - Wasdale

27th June 2006

15 miles 6,500 ft

This is the longest and trickiest of all the legs on the Bob Graham round to Recce. It is difficult to make a loop out of it, as you can with all the others, without making it into a 10 hour day. So I planned to camp at Wasdale and get my father to give me a lift back to Dunmail Raise allowing me to run back over the route to our (Mark and Is) campsite at Wasdale.

My father and I dropped Mark off with the tents at Wasdale camp site, then my father dropped me off at Dunmail Raise, before he returned home. I was a bit nervous as I only had minimal knowledge of the route beyond Harrison Stickle.

The day was fairly easy for navigation with mainly high clouds. So I found the navigation pretty comfortable. I took the long route around Martcrag Moor. However I found it tough to pick the right line when I reached Bow Fell. I did however ascend on a fairly good line and never really struggled all the way to Broad stand. Here I chose to go via Lords Rake. The chock stone looming over head looking as if it could tumble down the thin steep gully was a bit scary. But not as scary as the free climbing I did out of lords rake after that. I chose the wrong route and instead of descending a bit beyond the chock stone, I headed straight up a gully. It scared me to a point of trying to climb back out of the corner I had backed myself into. I decided to calm myself and then make a real effort to carefully rock climb my way up and out. I made it. Just. when I got out into the open side of Sca Fell I looked up to the summit to my left and decided not to bother. My water was running out and I had just scared myself quite a lot, so I thought that I had done enough for 1 day.

I reached the campsite after washing myself in the stream. I felt much fresher but Mark thought I looked knackered. This was probably partly because of the way I staggered towards him, and the tents he had kindly erected, and flopped to the floor. I remember saying to him that I had underestimated the difficulty of the Bob Graham Round. Any of my previous thoughts of doing it later in the year were dismissed. I now knew it would be summer 2007 before I would attempt it.

Mark and I enjoyed the rest of the weekend, and on the next day we went via Highnose head up Kirk Fell then onto Great Gable and back to the camp via Sty Head.