Qualla: Great Gable

Great Gable: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ericoides, CC BY-SA 4.0. From Wasdale, it looks like a perfect pyramid - the kind of mountain a child would draw. Walk a quarter of the way around it and the pyramid melts into a dome, the dome into a slumped shoulder. Great Gable does not have a true face; it has angles, depending on where you stand. And on Remembrance Sunday each year, a small crowd of climbers gathers at the boulder-strewn summit, takes off hats in the wind, and remembers a war that ended more than a century ago.

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Image: Ericoides | CC BY-SA 4.0

Great Gable: A Hub of High Country

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andy Beecroft, CC BY-SA 2.0. Great Gable sits in the middle of everything in the western Lake District. Spread a map and you'll see ridges fanning away from it like spokes - the Western Fells form a horseshoe wrapped around the Ennerdale valley, and at the central hub of that horseshoe stands Gable, with its...

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Image: Andy Beecroft | CC BY-SA 2.0

Great Gable: The Climbers' Cenotaph

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stephen Horncastle, CC BY-SA 2.0. The summit is a confused tumble of boulders, with a cairn marking the highest point. Set into the rock is a bronze plaque honouring members of the Fell and Rock Climbing Club who died in the First World War. The original plaque had errors in the spelling of the dead men's names -...

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Image: Stephen Horncastle | CC BY-SA 2.0

Great Gable: Westmorland's Cairn, Wainwright's Walk

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0. About 150 yards south of the true summit, on the lip overlooking Great Napes, sits another cairn - smaller, older, with a more personal story. Two brothers named Westmorland built it in 1876 to mark what they considered the finest view in the Lake District. From there the ground ...

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Image: Andrew Smith | CC BY-SA 2.0

Great Gable: Routes Up, and the Reason to Take Them

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nigel Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0. There is no single best way up Great Gable. Routes lead in from every dale - from Wasdale by the steep direct line, from Borrowdale up Sour Milk Gill out of Seathwaite and over Green Gable, from Ennerdale along the wild north flank. Each approach reveals a different mountain. The...

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Image: Nigel Chadwick | CC BY-SA 2.0