Cautley Spout

Cautley Spout is allegedly England's highest waterfall according to Wikipedia, and is located in the Howgill Fells. Its a bit of a winter classic, forming after a good period of cold temperatures what is a pretty good ice route. I've been up to it a few times before when walking in the Howgills, most recently two weeks ago - at that point I definitely did not think I was going to be getting on it this early in the season!

With university commitments during the days all this week I was getting a little frustrated, so on Tuesday evening I suggested to Ben that perhaps we should go and get on it one night, which is what we did last night. I was a little skeptical about conditions, so earlier in the week, daringly started a thread on UKC to see if anybody had been up there, hoping it wouldn't spur on loads of overly keen people to go and get on before us and knock all the ice off! The route is in Brian Davison's Lake District Winter Climbs book in the outlying areas section. Its given III and 250m, and has a short approach of probably only 1.5km and a small amount of ascent.

Myself, almost feeling like I was on fat Canadian water-ice.

When we left the car at Cross Keys it was getting on towards 7pm, and was about -4C which boded well, another good sign was that the river that flows parallel to the road had a reasonable layer of ice on it. After about 25 minutes we were at the base of the ghyll. Its obviously been well visited over the last few days as there was a defined track that wove its way up the lower stages to the large enclosed amphitheater below the first proper and crux pitch - there are a few small ice steps before this so geared up, apart from ropes about halfway up.

Ben below the 2nd pitch we roped up for, with quite a cold plunge pool below him.

We'd seen some headtorches on the the walk in and met this pair just as they were backing off the first pitch, having taken a line on skier's left of the ghyll. We decided to go and have a look anyway. We set up an intermediate stance probably 25m off the deck and then I lead off up the crux. At first the ice was good, but the higher I got the more detached and hollow it became, mostly sugary spray ice as appose to water ice that my tools were just pulling through. It wouldn't take screws and a bit of dig for some rock gear below was fruitless so I decided to bail, only about 6m from the top of the 30m pitch, and started the careful downclimb. A few more days of cold weather, or perhaps even first thing int he morning and perhaps this pitch would be ok, I guess it would probably go at around WI3, Scottish tech 4 in good conditions. I got to the belay and lowered Ben to the ground before downclimbing again, we took a look at skier's right as well but that looked as it probably wouldn't go either, and we would of has to get seriously wet.

Ice-climbing by headtorch - awesome!

Undeterred we escaped the ghyll up a small turf/scree gully on skiers left just below the amphitheater and walked up and traverse in to just above the crux pitch that had just thwarted us. Here we soloed for a while up small ice steps following the ghyll before roping up where it steepens again for 4 pitches, the best certainly being the penultimate full 50m pitch of good ice, probably going at WI3-, so nowhere near hard but fantastic for UK Ice. All night we had fantastic weather, perfectly clear skies with bright stars, perhaps the only thing that could of made it better would of a full moon. Climbing winter routes at night is cool, go do it.