Author Chris Fisher
Published FRCC (2024)
ISBN 978-1-8380054-2-9

Website frcc.co.uk

Review

Eskdale by Chris Fisher. . Published by FRCC Guides 2024.

The new definitive Eskdale guidebook from the FRCC Guides stable is an attractive package, pocket sized, so practical and packed with 60 crags and almost 1000 routes. It is produced in the latest FRCC Guides style, which is now so refined it is hard to imagine how it can be bettered. The style is colourful with lots of photo-topos, location maps and action photos. Eskdale has gone from being a section at the back of the Scafell guide of just 124 pages to being a guidebook of it’s own with 286 pages. In short Eskdale has grown up!

Eskdale is a quiet valley in the western Lake District and the climbing here has a unique feel. There are accessible outcrops of grippy granite in the valley and high mountain crags of Borrowdale volcanic rock that require much more effort to get to.

The jewel in the crown is the magnificent Esk Buttress, possibly the most impressive crag in the Lake District, remote but fast drying and sunny. Esk Buttress repays a high bivvi or wild-camp and has many impressive routes including the Hard Rock tick Central Pillar.

In the valley the granite crags of Brantrake, Bell Stand and Hare Crags are popular and the crags around Hardknott Pass with their superb outlook provide a little more solitude.

The areas of Hardknott Pass, Birker Moor and Harter Fell have been developed in the preparation of this guide book, with over 100 new routes discovered. The valley has just enough facilities to make a visit comfortable and relaxing but is still quiet and beautiful.

What about the guidebook then? For each crag there is all the information you could require to choose a venue for the day, Location map, grid reference, aspect, altitude and walk-in time. In addition there are QR codes that take you to location and parking on Googlemaps and the BMC RAD entry where one exists, these worked well on my phone. The photo-topos are good and should allow you to pick out the line of the route. For each route there is name, length, grade, star quality and first ascent details, everything you might expect. The location maps are good if a little small and many of the action photos give you a feel for the setting of the crag. The guidebook has good introductory details and ends with a good and not overly long history of climbing in the area, followed by a short history of Eskdale itself. There is an index of all the climbs. All this adds up to an interesting as well as useful package and it makes a good companion to the excellent Dow and Coppermines guidebook published last year.

Did it make me want to go? Yes indeed!

Anything I didn’t like? Only the rather small location maps.