February - Haystacks

Summit Height:
1958ft / 597m

What?
Haystacks

When?
17th February

Where?
Lake District - Buttermere

Who?
Annika, Manuela & Laura (& Tam for part of the way)

Why?
My ‘mountain a month’ challenge would not be complete without at least one Wainwright, and so I decided that I would go straight for his favourite mountain; Haystacks.

How?
We stayed at Buttermere YHA and some fellow walkers at the hostel, who had been visiting the area for 10 years, assured us that in the last decade they had never seen such good walking conditions, so we knew we were in for a treat!

We started our walk from the hostel, and the route took us along the lakeside path of Buttermere lake, to the foot of Haystacks. We ascended via Scarth Gap, which included a muddy detour due to recent flood damage on the path (just before the detour we said 'cheerio' to Tam).

As we reached about 300m we hit fairly thick snow, which against the back drop of blue sky, sun shine and Butteremere lake made for an incredibly beautiful day of walking; the most picturesque days walking I can remember!

We stopped for lunch on an outcrop which looked over the lake and back towards the other Buttermere peaks. With all of the peaks covered in snow, the view looked more like the Alps than the English lakes!

It was tricky to follow the path to the top, due to snow covering, and the last 100 meters or so require a bit of a scramble. The summit could not have been more different from that of January's summit; Bleaklow. Clear views, frozen tarns and bright sun shine will make this summit a very difficult one to beat when it comes to out right beauty!

A bad choice of decent route created a bit of a challenge in the snow on the way down, but a couple of hairy moments later and we were back on dry path!

My favourite photo of the day came towards the end of the hike as we started walking back towards the hostel along Buttermere Lake; I stopped and looked behind me and saw the summit I had just climbed reflected in the lake itself. The perfect end to a perfect days walking!
PS. The next day I woke up before sun rise and climbed to a slightly higher summit; Whiteless Peak (2165ft/660m). The others did not join me on this one , and so I had the whole mountain to myself. Although Whiteless was higher than Haystacks, I haven’t chosen it as my February summit because I feel that Haystacks was the more significant and picturesque of the two I climbed in February. Wainwright, it turns out, knew what he was talking about!