Author Topic: Red Gill, Scafell  (Read 2251 times)

JimD

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Red Gill, Scafell
« on: 14:47:24, 10/01/17 »
Has anyone ever used this, either for ascent or descent?  Wainwright discusses it in the book Memoirs of a Fellwanderer (p.48).  I'd quite like to give it a try although reports from Wasdale MR and other comments on the web suggest caution.  Any experience/advice gratefully received.

Hillhiker1

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Re: Red Gill, Scafell
« Reply #1 on: 21:22:12, 10/01/17 »
Googling "red gill scafell" doesn't make for erm..comforting reading. :o
Not to me anyroad... The wrong kind of excitement for me.

JimD

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Re: Red Gill, Scafell
« Reply #2 on: 11:43:38, 11/01/17 »
Yes...quite.  Wainwright is ambivalent.  He gives a fairly unappetizing account of a descent he made in his early days (in shoes), when looking for Lord's Rake also in descent, but then claims it as a 'discovery' and a quick (and presumably safe) way off Scafell for someone properly equipped.  I suspect the risk is less the route itself than the danger of missing the way through the formidable terrain.  Ho hum...maybe best avoided!
« Last Edit: 13:43:11, 11/01/17 by JimD »

Oldtramp

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Re: Red Gill, Scafell
« Reply #3 on: 18:30:18, 29/01/17 »
A trawl of websites delivers some results, none encouraging:


https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=11963


"When we reached the bottom of the second down section we chose to have a go at ascending Red Gill. Just as we set off up the rocks the rain started. By the time we got up near the top it was soaking wet and extremely slippery. We reached a large, over-hanging boulder that leans towards you and was I just couldn't get a grip on it so we had to turn around and scramble back down, which was much harder than going up."  


http://www.coast2coast.co.uk/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1611&page=1


"I took the wrong route and went up a different gully,think it was called Red gully [sic], but I know its one place I never want to see again.I can only describe it as desperate with numerous dangers like loose rock,stone fall,and huge boulders blocking the route.In places it was near vertical and exited on the summit via a chimney."  

 
http://forums.outdoorsmagic.com/showthread.php/40119-Gully-off-Lords-Rake-Scafell


"A few years back:   I met two walkers sat the bottom of Lord's Rake, who had the previous year had a sliding fall on the loose scree in Red Gill.   Both had been cut and bruised and one of them had broken or dislocated his arm."  

 
If Red Gill doesn't make the Wasdale MRT's catalogue of accident blackspots it's probably only because not many people try to go up it in the first place. Wainwright's accounts must date from the mid 50s, and rockfalls since then may well have changed conditions, just as on Lord's Rake itself.  

 


JimD

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Re: Red Gill, Scafell
« Reply #4 on: 10:47:32, 30/01/17 »
Wainwright's descent was during the early 1930s.  I am a little surprised that his comments on this route, if so it can be called, are so casual, even positive, in the light of these various experiences that folk report.  By contrast he gets quite exercised somewhere about the perils of Jack's Rake which I didn't find so bad.

Oldtramp

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Re: Red Gill, Scafell
« Reply #5 on: 11:11:48, 30/01/17 »
The amount and type of debris in a gully may well have changed in 80-odd years. 


This appears to be the rescue of broken shoulder man, above (or another who met the same fate), but only half the video plays and you don't get much of a view within the Gill itself.


http://www.wmrt.org.uk/incidents/2010-incident-69/


 

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