Pavey Ark

Pavey Ark (Jack’s Rake and Easy Gully clearly visible rising diagonally across the crag)

Height: 2288 feet above sea level

Volume: Book 3 (The Central Fells)

Date climbed: First visit: 13th February 2010 (walk 10). Second visit: 21st June 2016 (walk 112).

Pavey Ark from Lingmoor Fell (picture taken on walk 29, 6/1/11)

Bagged as number: First round: 33 of 330. [ << Thunacar Knott (32)  (34) Blea Rigg >> ].

Second round: 45 of 330 [ << Black Combe (42-44)  (46) Thunacar Knott >> ]

Route of ascent and descent: First visit: Approached from Thunacar Knott – a walk across a plateau rather than a ridge. Descended to Stickle Tarn via North Rake.

Second visit: Came up via Easy Gully, a route described on page 7 of Wainwright’s chapter. If thinking of coming this way please do read my advice on the walk 112 page. Left the summit across the plateau to Thunacar Knott.

What Mr Wainwright says (from p. 2 of his chapter): “Pavey Ark is Langdale’s biggest cliff. In an area where crags and precipices abound, here is the giant of them all and scenically it is the best…. It is usual to think of Pavey Ark as a crag, not as a fell. In a strict geographical sense the crag is the eastern boundary of Thunacar Knott, to which the ground above the crag gradually rises. But the Ark has its own proud little summit, an exhilarating place of grey rock, small tarns and soft vegetation that, in interest and charm, quite puts to shame the dreary top of the main fell. At the risk of offending Thunacar Knott, Pavey Ark must have a chapter to itself. The area to be covered is no more than a square half-mile but it is full of good things.”

Pavey Ark summit, with Harrison Stickle behind

What I say: It certainly is a huge, dramatic lump of rock: hardly a poetic description I know but that is how it forcefully presents itself, particularly when viewed from Stickle Tarn.

On my first visit I approached it from the back, via Thunacar Knott, but that does really do it justice. When I first put this page together, I claimed that one day I would try Jack’s Rake, about which Wainwright is painfully descriptive on pp. 5-6 of his chapter: this cross between a walk and a rock-climb is clearly visible on the picture above (click on it to open the larger version), slanting diagonally up the face of the crag. But over the years I have decided that is not going to happen, not least after reading Clive Hutchby’s description of it in his Wainwright Companion, and also having seen the start of the Rake at close quarters (see the picture below). But Easy Gully is no picnic either, particularly at the top. The only easy routes are to the left of the crag, or North Rake, at the back.

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The opening passage of Jack’s Rake. You’re welcome to it.