Wildboar Clough Scramble

Reaching the Clough (the sign is gone)

Follow the lefthand path leaving the cap park, past the memorial plantation, and once on the trans penine trail, turn left and follow this until you see a stile on the right hiding in the trees.

Follow this path into woodland, and make your way towards the obvious crack in the land, which is the clough.

Then follow a narrow path at the edge of the clough until it is convenient to join the boulders and start the scrambling!

The Scrambling

The fun part is here!

Make your way up several steep sections of the clough, finding good hand holds in cracks in the rock. Most of the steep sections are best climbed on the left side, where there is far less water, and better hand holds.

Climbing directly through the waterfall sections is probably only possible in a dry summer, or alternatively as a fun ice climb in winter.

Ride The Rock (carefully!)

The first obstacle is this rock wall that you can see in the image above.

The best way to scale this is using the angled rock on the left hand side. The image on the left shows the view from the top of this.

The rock slab is angled away to the right, with a very greasy layer that offers no grip whatsoever. This means you have to straddle the edge (trying not to squash anything valuable!) and slide yourself upwards until you can reach the hand hold above you to lever yourself upwards.

It’s narrow, so your bag will most likely be grazed afterwards!

Update: I found a photo on Instagram that perfectly shows how awkward it is! (click to see it).

Scaling The First Main Rock Wall

It looks fairly tricky on first glance, but make your way to the obvious crack in the rock just left of centre on the image above.

Tucked around the corner of this is the greasy gully you see on the image to the left. This is obviously slippy in places, but it also has convenient steps going up in a nice gradual fashion.

Simply walk up natures stairs and drag yourself onto the flat step above.

View of the Final Challenge

After you get over the wall, you will see the waterfall in the distance, looking very menacing and impossible to scale!

Have no fear though, there’s always a way.

The first smaller waterfall can be climbed via the crack on the left half if it’s dry enough, otherwise you will need to climb the grass on the right and tread carefully along the edge until you are on safer ground.

You will notice that lots of the rock faces are sloped to the right, which makes things extra awkward when trying to plan a route up!

The Crux

When wet and windy (lets be honest this is most of the time) be prepared to get sprayed on the approach!

Carefully follow the rocks on the left side, when wet you will probably need to crawl over the final parts to avoid slipping and hurting yourself.

Wriggle your way over the first few steps on the left, and look for the obvious gully line in the rock, this is our way out of this damp nightmare!

Step into the gully, and reach carefully for solid hand holds, as some of the rocks will be lose and fall way.

This is the most difficult part of the scramble, and care should be taken as there’s definitely not lots of margin for error.

However if you’re slow and steady, there are plenty of hand holds to help lever yourself up and out to freedom above!

The Traverse

Here is the part where you need to navigate to the top of Torside clough. It isn’t obvious, and there are many stiles to the right of the clough, but none result in a clear path.

Set your compass (or phone) pointing towards the point at which the Penine way meets Torside clough, taking your time to walk carefully over uneven ground.

This part is not fun, however Wildboar clough offers no other continuations, so your only other option would be to descend the clough (or the grass banks to the side of it).

Descending Torside Clough

Torside Clough is often very slippy, and is quite awkward to descend. It involves scaling a fence at the beginning.

Now you need to descend Torside clough back to the trans penine trail. If you would prefer an easier route down, you can take the Penine way instead which follows the edge of Torside rocks all the way back to the trans penine trail.

The scramble down is easy, but wet at the start, so keep to the grass until it gets more convenient to hit the rocks.

The last part of Torside clough seems to go on forever, but eventually you will reach the fairly flat section just before a tunnel. Look for a path on the left, leading you up and out of the clough, then rejoin the trans penine trail, turning right to make your way back to the car park.