Paul Lydon: Pavey Ark via Jack's Rake

Leaving the car at the car park near the New Dungeon Ghyll Hotel in Great Langdale, we followed the route on the west bank of Stickle Ghyll which was paved most of the way with flat stones forming steps.
We passed a group of kids “gorge walking” in the stream who seemed to be enjoying themselves.
It was quite warm as we made our way up towards Pavey Ark, whose summit we could see peeking out above us as it appeared over the top of Pike How.
Soon we arrived at the small dam at Stickle Tarn with the impressive craggy south-east face of Pavey Ark towering over the tarn where we could easily make out the diagonal route of Jack's Rake as it slanted up from the lower right to the upper left.
We stopped for a brew of tea sitting in the lee of the small dam and chatted to another walker who had passed us earlier and who was also making his way to do Jack's Rake. Luckily the weather was good and there were very few others about.
After we finished our drink, we started on the oath around the west shore of the tarn as we headed for the beginning o the Grade 1 scramble up Jack's Rake.
On the way I noticed a small pile of greyish-white material with a small cross formed by rocks and some flowers by the side of the tarn. I soon realised this was someone's ashes which had been left there recently.
Anyway, we reached the foot of the scrambling and saw the man we had talked to earlier further up the route and he soon disappeared out of site. Karen led off following the rocky groove which led easily up to a small ash tree above. After this there were short sections of horizontal path and more slanting groove. The climbing was very easy and the views across the tarn and into the distance gradually became more open as the height was gained but as you were mainly in a groove, there wasn't a great deal of a sense of exposure. As an added bonus, we had the whole route now to ourselves with dry rock except for the odd slimy section on the right-hand wall.
I took over a stint at the front where a very short horizontal section slanted downwards slightly to reach a steeper section. There was a sloping section of grass leading down to the left to a large drop and I could see this was on part of the scramble you wouldn't want to fall off the rock as you would probably slide down the grassy shoot and continue for a long way. However, the holds were very good and it was only a very short climb to a platform above.
After much easier short sections of scrambling we reached a platform at around chest height which had a slightly awkward step on its outer edge to allow you to gain the top. There was a reasonably good pair of hand holds so we were soon past that bit.
I could see the end of the scramble not far above now with an obvious small conical section of rock. To reach this we had to cross a short section of slab with good hand holds and reasonable foot holds (with good friction) even though there was a good sense of exposure from the slabs to the tarn far below.
After this there was more very easy scrambling on short rock steps and all too soon we reached the end of the excellent scramble at a short section of drystone-wall near Pavey Ark's summit.
We found a sheltered spot by a rocky outcrop and ate lunch.
Afterwards, we followed a vague path heading mostly south-east towards the nearby peak of Harrison Stickle. Along this section either the wind increased quite a lot or it was just funnelling through a saddle, but it was much stronger than it had been up to that point and quite a bit colder.
We claimed a path towards the top of Harrison Stickle but didn't bother with the small spur of a path to reach the summit and continued on a path leading down towards Pike 0'Stickle.
At a junction with another path leading towards Loft Crag, we headed in the direction of Loft Crag and then veered off onto a second path which followed above the impressive gash if Dungeon Ghyll and onwards towards Thorn Crag.

Soon we were heading back down beside Dungeon Ghyll passing Dungeon Ghyll Force waterfall on the way until we arrived back at our starting point.