After
completing the Wainwrights my attention turned to new objectives, particularly
but not exclusively the Nuttalls. Online
research led me to the Harold Street website where I stumbled upon the
Simpsons, an older list of Lake District 2000ft summits. FHF Simpson had published an article in the
1937 Wayfarers’ Club journal and as I was (and still am) a member of the
Wayfarers’ I decided to add the Simpsons to my own To Do list. I had already climbed many of the Simpson summits
and I worked out which ones I hadn’t climbed using the Harold Street list.
Of
those I hadn’t logged as climbed was Glaramara North Top which appeared to be
the only summit on the Glaramara – Allen Crags ridge that I had not ticked. It wasn’t until sometime later that I became
uncomfortable with the fact that I hadn’t ticked the north top, particularly as
I walked the length of the ridge in 2013 to tick all of the numerous Nuttalls
that I had previously missed; so I did some research.
The
Harold Street website gives a grid reference that places the north top at the
north-east side of the summit dome. The
grid reference that it gives for Glaramara places that summit approximately 200
metres south-west of the north top. This
makes it clear where the north top is, but doesn’t describe what it is.
At
this point, I started reading various guides to work out the topography of the
summit area.
Database of British
and Irish Hills (DoBIH), Glaramara (entry 2389), Observations:
“Nuttall summit;
Wainwright summit (cairn) 160m NE at NY 24722 10561 and cairn 55m W are lower”
Although
rather perfunctory, this description states that the summit of Glaramara is a
Nuttall but the cairn that Wainwright regarded as the summit does not coincide
with the high point and is lower. As the
Wainwright summit is described as north-east of the summit, the north top is
probably the Wainwright summit. There is
no separate DoBIH entry for the Wainwright summit.
A Wainwright – A
Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, Book 4, The Southern Fells, Glaramara,
The Summit:
“Twin summits of rock
rise from a surrounding ocean of grass, each within its own circle of
crags. They are much alike, and of
similar elevation, but indisputably the finer is that to the north-east...”
Wainwright
makes it clear that there are two summits and he regards the north-east summit
as the true summit.
Mark Richards –
Lakeland Fellranger, The Mid-Western Fells, Glaramara, The Summit:
“The name Glaramara
belongs to the summit. Which summit you
ask? Well the more northerly.”
Richards
agrees with Wainwright which is not surprising as he was friends with the
original chronicler of the Lakeland fells.
John and Anne Nuttall
– The Mountains of England and Wales, Volume 2: England, Walk 5.4:
“Descend to a grassy
col and follow the main path to the west top of the twin summits. Wainwright prefers the east top for its
better position and view, but the west one is the higher of the two. The highest point is the cairn set a little
back from the edge, though another cairn on the edge itself marks a better
vantage point.”
The
Nuttalls also agree that there are twin summits and acknowledge Wainwright’s
opinion although they stick to the convention that the highest point is the
true summit, reinforcing the DoBIH position that the (south-)westerly is the
actual summit.
Bill Birkett –
Complete Lakeland Fells, walk BOR2:
“Next to be ascended
and lying dead ahead is the middle top of Glaramara – Looking Steads. Two rocky points rise above the summit; the
north easterly of these is the Glaramara summit.”
Birkett
also acknowledged the twin summits of Glaramara and agrees with Wainwright and
Richards that the north-eastern summit should be regarded as the true top.
It
is obvious that the summit area of Glaramara has two distinct tops and that
Wainwright, Richards and Birkett take an opposing view to the Nuttalls and the
DoBIH as to which should be considered the true summit. As the DoBIH is a data-based source and not
swayed by opinion, the south-western top should be regarded as the true
summit. It is unfortunate that the DoBIH
does not have a separate entry for the north-eastern top as such an entry would
have prevented my confusion.
At
this point, the summits had been identified, but had I actually climbed the
North Top?
As
Wainwright regards it as the summit, surely I must have done as I’ve completed
the Wainwrights! But it wouldn’t do any
harm to double-check. Reading my blog
entry for the day that I walked the length of the ridge, I found this:
“The top of Glaramara
has 3 obvious summits which was a surprise to me as I was only expecting
two! Not far beyond the 20-foot rock
step is the Wainwright summit. A little
further away is the Nuttall summit which is higher and slightly beyond that is
another top which looks almost as high – I ticked all three!”
And
that’s about as conclusive as it gets; I have ticked both tops and now I can
remove Glaramara North Top from my list of unclimbed Simpsons.
It’s
not often that I find a summit that I can tick as a result of some detective
work rather than putting on my boots, which means that, almost inevitably, I
have joined the ranks of Armchair Mountaineers!
