Pillar Rock - Dave Ridout's Last Day On The Hill

As many of you may know about 2 months ago Dave Ridout, a very established figure is West Lancashire Scouting and the Mountaineering Group while also being a good friend and mentor to me personally passed away. He taught me a lot in the way of hillcraft and other skills and also encouraged me to take on more leadership roles and pass my skills on to those then me, as he'd been doing for so many years. I will always remember him assessing me on my scout mountain leader assessment, having me wonder around above Longseldale trying to find tiny ring contours in the fog!

Pillar Rock.

Dave was most certainly a peak bagger, having done all the 2,000ft summits in England and Wales (he was also a good way through his Munros) bar one, Pillar Rock. This naturally seemed a fitting place for us to scatter his Ashes.

A large group of friends assembled at Wasdale Head Inn the evening before for a few drinks in rememberance and more joined us in the morning, in total we were nearly 50 strong. We reached the grassy hillside by Pillar Rock around 2:30pm and held a short service where friends said a few words about Dave before members of the Mountaineering group took him to the summit.

Scattering Dave's Ashes on Pillar Rock, his last 2,000ft'er.

We did Slab an Notch, graded Mod it sits somewhere in between scrambling and climbing. I've done the route in descent from climbs on the face utilizing the abseil into the gap between High Man and Pisagh but never done the ascent in its entirety. I'd read somewhere that the Slab section at the beginning was the crux but I though this was fairly ameanable, as was the Notch section which large incut holds. The trickiest bit I thought was the wet gully that you finish up which is fairly polished, bot none of it is desperate. We soloed it, rigging a fixed line as we went for those following us but it could easily be protected conventionally with just a few slings and a short rope. After a short ceremony and scattering of Dave's ashes on the summit we abbed off, with myself and Stu reclaiming the fixed lines before heading over the summit of Pillar and back down to Wasdale. An excellent day, and one that I hope Dave would of been proud of.