Bowfell - Summit and View

Summit and View

The summit area is a ridge running north-south with the final pyramid near the southwest corner and crags on three sides. The southern face is formed by Bowfell Links, an impressive wall of crag scarred by nine vertical gullies and with corresponding tongues of scree at its foot. A climb up these is neither pleasurable nor safe as they are extremely active loose rock channels. The eastern face carries a wealth of features including Flat Crag, Cambridge Crag and the Bowfell Buttress, the latter two providing good climbing. Flat Crag includes the Great Slab, a remarkable tilted sheet of rock which looks exactly how it sounds. Below these faces runs the Climber's Traverse, a narrow path providing an excellent high-level walking route to the summit from the highest point of The Band. This largely horizontal line contours around beneath many of Bowfell's most dramatic crags, finally reaching the summit via a rocky route known as the River of Boulders, running parallel to the Great Slab. Finally on the north east corner of the summit ridge is Hanging Knotts, a complex series of faces and outcrops looking down upon Angle Tarn.

The highest point carries not so much a cairn as a rearrangement of some loose rock at the apex of the pyramid. The panorama is excellent, improved immeasurably by the steep final slope and lack of foreground. Every major group of fells in Lakeland is seen well from this superb vantage point — the Helvellyn range from end-to-end and the Langdale Pikes across Langdale — but the piece of the view is Scafell Pike towering above Eskdale.

• Panorama