The offer was for two fellwalkers who would be roped together and share a climbing rack. Having braved the frozen slopes of Cairngorm together, climbing Pinnacle Ridge seemed an appropriate next step. We’ve been Facebook friends for a while but finally met in February when we both attended a three-day winter skills course in the Highlands. Underneath was a comment from Nikki Knappett saying, “that looks amazing”. On the evening of April 1 st, I spotted a Facebook post by Graham Uney Mountaineering offering fellwalkers, who want to step up a level, a guided and roped scramble over this iconic arête. Pinnacle Ridge is a grade 3 scramble, much celebrated by those who have experienced its airy drama, but in Wainwright’s view, the grade 1-classified Jack’s Rake on Pavey Ark is “the limit” for fellwalkers, and like many others, I had long imagined Pinnacle Ridge to be beyond my capabilities. Few brave its most dramatic ascent, however, as that lies within the liminal realm where walking ends and climbing begins. Wainwright completists now regularly discover St Sunday Crag by way of Birks or Arnison Crag, or by Deepdale Hause from Grisedale Tarn or Fairfield. These days, walkers are a more regular feature thanks in no small part to a book published eleven years before Griffin’s: Alfred Wainwright’s, The Eastern Fells. He expresses surprise at how walkers and climbers have long overlooked “this long line of crag, as big as several Napes Ridges crowded together” when, “the Grisedale face of the mountain, which drops nearly 2000‘ in half a mile is one of the most dramatic fellsides in the country… Rock climbers had missed it for years and only started making climbs there 12 years ago”. So wrote Harry Griffin in The Roof Of England in 1968.
Sunday Crag dominates the western reach of Ullswater far more dramatically than Helvellyn and, in a sense, commands the whole length of the lake better than any other mountain”.
Sunday Crag IS the Ullswater mountain,’ and, when you come to think about it, it’s not a bad description.
“Somewhere in an old guide-book, published more than fifty years ago, I remember reading: ‘St. Then something happened, and I found myself on belay on one of Lakeland’s most dramatic arêtes. Pinnacle Ridge on St Sunday Crag is a head-rush of wonder and adrenaline, but as a grade 3 scramble, I had long imagined it beyond my capabilities.
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