A cold Arctic blast descended on Britain in the first days of 2025, bringing freezing temperatures and transforming the hills and mountains into potentially dangerous environments. On Thursday, January 2, high pressure brought blue skies and clear air – the sort of conditions that are a siren song to avid hill goers. Many, myself included, headed for the fells of the Lake District on that day to blow away the winter cobwebs.
Around midday, members of the Keswick Mountain Rescue team were called out to an incident on the notorious Sharp Edge, a narrow crest of rock on Blencathra, a mountain in the national park's Northern Fells. This arête is a popular grade one scramble in summer and a serious mountaineering objective when covered in snow. The rock is well polished from the passage of countless hiking boots and is renowned for being dangerously slippery when wet or iced up, particularly a sloping section known as ‘the Bad Step’. The gully below this treacherous section is known to Mountain Rescue as ‘the Usual Gully’.
