Start from Seathwaite, parking at Seathwaite Farm, and walking through the farm follow the path towards the obvious crossing at Stockley Bridge. Follow the path that runs steeply up alongside Styhead Ghyll, carrying on to Styhead Tarn. From here you should be able to see the huge cut in the side of the Great End which marks the start of Skew Ghyll.
Evans awards Skew Ghyll Grade 1, zero stars. I soloed it yesterday. I was alone since the situation regarding scrambling company has gone completely critical and I chose Skew Ghyll since I wanted an interesting route onto Great End to retrieve my missing pictures of Cust’s gully (ibidem). It can be seen from the corridor route onto Scafell Pike.
Actually I think Mr Evans is unkind in this instance. For a start Skew Ghyll gets you well away from the madding crowds (and yesterday they were numbered by the hundred – I kid you not) as nobody else in their right mind is going to go there.
However it’s also big enough to have its own micro climate and is full of flowers.
Huge towers and pinnacles hint of secret, inaccessible side valleys and it’s easy to imagine pterodactyls swooping down to snatch the innocent scrambler from his tenuous stance.
Higher up, where the Ghyll starts to narrow down a bit, the stance does indeed get a bit tenuous.
It’s usually possible to scramble up the sides of the beck but I didn’t fancy this much on this occasion. It all looked a bit loose and you could fall quite a long way.
So it seemed better to climb through the water and brave the slime – which actually wasn’t too bad for once.
Fortunately there wasn’t much water about yesterday but a couple of sections required close concentration and a certain determination.
The finale finds you breaking left up a steep cleft over a large chockstone. I found my heartbeat was distinctly accelerated at this point, so while I think I’d go with Mr Evans Grade 1 (under low-water conditions, at least) I would certainly want to award a star or two.
After a bit of rain, I imagine things could get quite exciting and you might want to take a wet-suit – and it could get quite dangerous.
In this week’s Whitehaven News (25/09/2024) a local walker fell and died in Skew Ghyll. The Keswick Mountain Rescue Team spotted something next morning when they were passing Styhead Tarn. They estimated that the victim had fallen 15-20 metres. I can’t imagine anywhere low down in the Ghyll where that could have happened. 60-year-old and experienced. Sad.