You might be wondering why I'm walking High Street again? Well a couple of weeks ago I noticed that my total summits had reached forty-five and I thought being 50 years old that it would be good to reach fifty by the end of the year. Why the end of the year when my Birthday is in May?...not sure I just thought it would be good so the plan is to walk five consecutive High Street walks using different routes as opposed to my favourite ascent from Mardale Head via Rough Crag. I mentioned this to David and Rod and with Rod not being a fan of the early starts David said he'd join me, mind you that was on another route which I've shelved due to how the weather turned out, with low cloud forecast for much of the day we both knew we'd be struggling to the nose at the end of our faces, still, it wasn't enough to put us off. This route is a plan B walk that I came up with while emailing David on Friday afternoon, seeing as we had the use of two cars I thought why not park one in Hartsop and one at the top of Kirkstone Pass, an out of the ordinary route that David jumped at him being that way inclined.

We arranged to meet at Hartsop at 07:00am where I found David parked up next to a 'Road Closed' sign for what reason we didn't know but we couldn't get though to the car park in Hartsop so we drove to the car park at Cow Bridge instead where I transferred my gear into David's car before setting off back up the pass. I had pre-warned David about the dozing sheep in the road just lying there chewing the cud without a care in the world I only hoped non of them came a cropper. It was dark when I drove down the pass but in the ten minutes it had taken us to drive back up it had lightened enough to start the walk without head torches. another ten minutes after that dawn had broke but you wouldn't think it given the thick canopy of cloud which arrived during kit up and with it came a cold wind forcing jackets on before boots. David had brought Calva with him who was eager to get underway and after David added a windproof, fleece lined high neck coat to Calva David locked the car, crossed the top of the pass and joined the path towards St Raven's Edge.

We took our time easing our way down using snippets of grass whereever we could, but there was nothing we could do when we had no choice but to scramble down two significant rock steps where we either threw our poles forwards and carefully negotiated the rock. David still had Calva on the end of a long leash that was fastened to a loop around his waste, Calva being the adventurer wanted to take the scrambles in his stride which at times caught David off guard so we came up with a plan where I would be no more than a foot away from Calva to stop him lurching forwards, it worked a treat.

The image shows the lower rock step just above the bottom of Thresthwaite Mouth. The rock steps were well over a meter tall so after I eased myself down I beckoned Calva, scooped him up and with David lengthening the leash eased him down before David scrambled down. It was textbook and soon grass replaced the rock as we crossed Thresthwaite Mouth.

After another quick tap of The Knott's summit cairn we began our descent by the wall where I had made my ascent one week earlier where, for the first time in hours the wind dropped to nothing so David treated Calva to some food which he lapped up. After a few minutes we were back in descent joining the familiar path where we gradually descended through the cloud. We continued to follow the path sighting a solo walker sat down on a broken wall more or less opposite Rest Dodd and I gave him a wave and got one in return.

We made it down to Hayeswater Gill spotting two short wearing walkers ascending the old path above Hayeswater bound for The Knott, it's the steeper less trodden path and I wondered why they had chosen to ascend that way. On reaching Hayeswater Gill we crossed the outflow via the stepping stones just as I had last week the water line the same and the stones, just as slippery. With Hayeswater Gill falling away steeply to our right we began our descent towards Hartsop, views opening out towards the Hartsop above How ridge where only Gale Crag was out the clagg. We passed two pairs of walkers heading towards Hayeswater and we wondered where they had parked with the car park being closed, we'd soon get our answer.

We crossed Hayeswater Gill via the familier bridge from where we took in the views through Pasture Bottom towards a heavily clagged Thresthwaite Mouth remembering how wild it had been hours earlier it looked relatively peaceful in the cloud. Continuing towards Hartsop we passed the sheep pens which were full of sheep from where I took this delightful photo. We were confused on reaching the car park which had about eight cars parked up but how could this be? the sign earlier said 'Road Closed' had it been a trick or had someone thought sod it, moved the sign, ignored the warnings and parked up anyway?