A couple of weeks ago I asked Reg 2E0LDF if he would like to do some summits near Wasdale (Irton Pike, Whin Rigg and Illgill Head) on Wed 3rd April as I was on holiday that week but Wednesday was my only day I could get out walking due to other commitments. Reg very kindly said yes. However as the day grew closer the weather forecast was not great so we changed it to Grike LDW-177 and Crag Fell LDW-162 / HLD-011 for HEMA instead. A good move as it transpired.
I arranged to meet Reg on the Cold Fell road at about 9.00am. I set off from Annan at about 7.15am and arrived at about 8.45am. As I was turning off the A66 onto the A5086 Reg called me on s20. He was right behind me so we chatted all the way till we parked up. The weather was raining all the way from home and in fact it never stopped all the time we were out.
We set off walking at 9.00am local and arrived on the summit of Grike LDW-177 at 10.00am. The walk in was easy although the walk up to Grike from the mine road is steep. There is a good summit shelter on the summit but as it was very windy and wet it did not offer much shelter.
We spent 20 minutes on the summit and made 6 contacts. These were:-
M7BUY – Kevin
M0LLC – Lee
GW0PLP – Don
GM3VMB – Peter (Eaglesfield)
G4PEW – Noel
G0MWE – Roger
Don GW0PLP was an amazing contact on 2m as he is located near Tan-y-groes in Wales. I checked the distance and it came out at 172 miles. I think reports were about 56 57 each way but Reg will know better I think. I could hear him weakly on my Yaesu VX6 with an RH770 copy but made contact using Reg’s setup. Reg was using a roach pole so had the advantage of height but it was an amazing contact nevertheless.
Terrain profile of our contact with GW0PLP from Grike.
We left the summit at 1020hrs local when contacts dried up.
Between Grike and Crag Fell was very boggy but it only took us 30 mins to get from Grike to the summit of Crag Fell.
The wind was not as strong on Crag Fell but it was still raining. As it was a Hema we required 4 contacts to qualify it and in the end we made 7. These were as follows:-
G7KSE – Alex
M0LLC – Lee
GM3VMB – Peter
GM6LJE – Robin
2E0IKM – Mike
2E0XGO – Richard
G4VFL – Andrew
We spent just over 30 minutes on the summit before setting off. We descended down to the mine road where it was nearly 3 miles back to the cars.
Although the weather was lousy it was a great walk. When you have good company it does not matter about the weather. Had it have been good weather I was going to bring a mobile radio with a SLAB battery and use 25/50 watts but today was far to wet,
Thank you to all the chasers and especially Reg for accompanying me in very wet conditions. There is nothing unusual about that because I seem to be a jinx when it comes to weather!
GPX route.
Apologies for rain on the camera lens but i could not keep it clear due to wind and rain.
73’s Geoff GM4WHA / G4WHA/P