You may have wondered why Polly and I have not been out on the fells in the amazing weather we have been having over the past week.  Well, Polly caught a nasty bacterial infection nearly two weeks ago and was restricted to Weetabix, scrambled egg, boiled rice and poached fish for nearly a week.  Once she was cured she had to build up to walking up hills again and once she had recovered her strength, I pulled a muscle in my back!!!

However, we are both fit again and we celebrated with a wonderful walk over Helvellyn today.  We parked in frost and gloom at Stanah and we were nearly at the top of Sticks Pass before we met the sun.  Raise was much brighter and snowier than my last visit for Jo's 214 celebration.  I say snow but it had thawed and frozen several times and all the north facing slopes were covered in white ice.  Helvellyn, Catstycam and Lower Man all looked very impressive although they would have been much more impressive ten days ago.  There really wasn't a cloud in the sky though and conditions were perfect.  I didn't use  crampons for my walk but several climbers were using them and technical axes for routes on the east face of Helvellyn and gullies on the north face of Brown Cove Crags.

I had taken crampons with me and had a big debate as to whether I needed to put them on to descend a large snow/ice patch about 200 yards long on the north side of Brown Cove Crags.  In the end I opted not to and instead picked my way carefully from rock to rock as the snow/ice was too hard to kick steps.  It probably would have been quicker (and safer) to have put crampons on.  Some people I saw did wear them and they seemed to be moving faster than those of us not using them.

As I walked above the intake wall from Swirls to Stanah the setting sun turned the whole fellside gold - a great end to a great walk.

A full album is available on Webshots http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/561822215vSqGSN

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