'C' Ordinary Route on Dow Crag

Posted by Sam Harrison on July 26, 2013 at 15:51.

 Mountaineering and climbing

climbing coniston dow crag lake district multi-pitch

It's the day before we (me and Lorna) head out to the Vanoise National Park in the Alps, and I've finally managed to catch up on writing blog posts! This one is about a day out we had on Monday - a final bit of Alps training and a final chance to make the most of the weather.

For a while we have been wanting to repeat Giant's Crawl, a brilliant Diff route on one of the Lakes' most popular crags, Dow Crag. With that in mind, we decided to head up to Dow Crag on Monday morning and go for a climb. However, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to do another three-star Diff on the crag that neither of us had done before - the Ordinary Route on C Buttress - as it would be much better "Alps practice" to do a route we'd never done before. I'd also read that the route was better than Giant's Crawl, and after being recommended it by a guy I was working with at the weekend, the final decision was made.
 
Top of pitch five (i.e. our pitch three)
Top of pitch five (i.e. our pitch three)


We went for a "lightweight" approach, well, as lightweight as you can get with climbing gear. Owing to the weather, the waterproofs were ditched and replaced with a thin insulated jacket "just in case". We sweated our way up to Goats Tarn, before checking the route and heading to the lowest part of the crag, which is where the climb starts from. I lead the first pitch, and no sooner had I brought Lorna up, another two groups arrived at the bottom of the climb - phew, just in time! Lorna lead the second pitch, before I accidentally joined pitches three, four and five together. This wouldn't have been a problem, had it not been for the rope drag which made dragging myself up the slabs on pitch five hard work. The climbing was relatively straight forward, but in a fantastic position we great exposure - I can see where it gets its three stars from! Lorna take over once more for pitch six, which was by-far-and-away the crux of the route (though whether we were actually on the route is debatable). I was glad of the rope above me as I teetered around a protruding bulge before awkwardly pulling myself over a block with little hand-holds and plenty of exposure - good lead Lorna! The final pitch added some excitement in the form of a rightwards traversing gangway that threw me a bit off balance. I soon topped out onto Easy Terrace (another route on the crag that gets a grade 3 scrambling grade) and belayed from a massive block.
 
Lorna leading the crux pitch - the difficulties lie just above
Lorna leading the crux pitch - the difficulties lie just above


The difficulties weren't quite over, and we struggled finding our way up the buttress directly behind the climb - we headed around to the right before branching up left, whereas I think in retrospect the best approach would be to follow Easy Terrace leftwards for a short while first, as we eventually found a path coming from that direction. After summitting, we descended via Blind Tarn, which gave us an opportunity to take a dip in the refreshingly cold waters without the crowds of people that we gathered around Goats Tarn.
 
Topping out on Dow Crag
Topping out on Dow Crag
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