RUTHWAITE LODGE IN THE
1960S
By Anthony Toole
Grizedale and Ruthwaite Lodge
On a cold November day, some
years ago, I took a party of about a dozen of my Sixth Form students, one of
whom was my eldest son, for a walk up Helvellyn. Conditions were
On reaching the summit, after
a struggle through deep snow, we proceeded in brilliant sunshine across the
wintry wastes of Nethermost and Dollywaggon Pikes, then down to a frozen
Grizedale Tarn. From there we followed the track back toward the mini-bus which
we had left in Patterdale. As we approached Ruthwaite Lodge, nestling amid the
drumlins at the valley head, I was delighted to see smoke rising from its
chimney.
We invited ourselves. inside,
and were welcomed by a member of Sheffield University Mountaineering Club who
was spending the weekend alone in the hut. During the course of our
conversation, I told him that, for the academic year 1964-5, I had been the
warden of the lodge, and had spent many memorable days there. With a slow nod
of the head he replied, “I was being born just about then.” That put things
into some kind of perspective.
Ruthwaite Lodge was found as
a roofless shell, by members of SUMC in the early 1950s. It had previously been
a hunter's refuge. On acquiring the lease, the discoverers rebuilt it to its
present Spartan elegance, as a base from which they could walk and climb on the
surrounding hills. By the end of the 1950s it had become a major focus of
activity. Men such as Jack Soper, Nev Crowther and others were beginning what
became quite illustrious mountaineering careers by making frequent assaults on
the largely unclimbed rock faces in the valley.
Ruthwaite Lodge in 2011 
I first saw the hut in June
1963, after hitching from
By then, however, I had
acquired a huge appetite for rock, and returned a few days later with another
companion, Adrian Brooks, eager to climb everything that was climbable. The
next week turned out to be one of those which I will always remember as a high
point of my life.
For seven days, we lived on a
meagre diet, and suffered the discomfort of hard seats and harder beds without
complaint. Our attempts at cleanliness and hygiene would have had our mothers
screaming. We followed a regime of physical activity which would have been
condemned as brutal had it been imposed upon us by someone else. Yet by the end
of the week, we had become healthier and stronger than we had ever been before.
We rose at around seven
o'clock each morning, and after a frugal breakfast, set out for the crags. On
some days this meant a hard slog, laden with ropes and rucksacks, up the side
of St Sunday Crag and over into Deepdale, the next valley. After completing
more than a thousand feet of rock climbing, we trudged back to the hut at seven
in the evening. Refreshed by our only meal of the day, we then went to a nearby
crag to do one more climb before dark.
At the start of the week, we
regarded ourselves rather as beginners at the sport. By the end, we had assumed
the manners and mode of speech of experts. From tentative forays onto easy
climbs, we quickly moved to confident attacks on the hardest.
Eagle Crag 
The climb with the biggest
reputation, then, was 'Sobrenada', on Eagle Crag, first done a few years
earlier by another
That week in 1963, however,
was magical. We had withdrawn completely from the world, and lived on a
permanent high. My home and family were no more than twenty miles away, at the
other side of the Lake District, yet I felt no desire to visit them. The
completeness of our isolation may be gauged from the fact that we missed,
entirely, the biggest political scandal of the 'sixties. By the time we
returned to civilisation, The ‘Profumo affair’ had become dead news.
There were other great days
at Ruthwaite Lodge during later years, though perhaps none quite achieved the
intensity of those early visits. Nevertheless, the experiences I had on
Scrubby, Hutaple, Falcon and Eagle crags played a major part in forming what I
have, for better or worse, become.
On one occasion, as hut
warden, I organised a working party to the lodge after the roof had blown off
during a winter storm. In spite of a blizzard, six of us spent a cheerful and
very noisy Sunday hammering it back on again. At other times, the valley was
quiet, and even on a sunny bank holiday, we would have the crags to ourselves
and could climb on rocks where no more than two or three others had ever been
before us. This was the great charm of the area, and stood in complete contrast
to the often frenetic bustle of the more populous valleys of Langdale and
Borrowdale.
I remember the stillness of
early morning, and how it magnified the slightest of sounds. Being wakened by
the thud of a sheep's horn on the stone of the hut, and the loud crunch as the
animal cropped the grass of the hillside. The icy coldness of a naked bathe in
the waterfall. Drunken songs echoing from the valley walls at midnight, after a
session in the White Lion in Patterdale. Arguments and scuffles over who
should have the 'Honeymoon Suite' in the front room of the hut. Muffled giggles
from the same suite carrying through the wall to the bunkhouse at the rear.
Mice scratching amid the crumbs on the floor after the last candle was blown
out.
And finally, there is the
abiding memory of the sharp light of early evening, and the last pink rays of
the dying sun about a darkening valley, picking out, in profile, the countless
ridges and gullies on St Sunday Crag.
St Sunday Crag 
