My Top 10 Favourite Lakeland Crags #4: Wallowbarrow Crag in the Duddon Valley

Wallowbarrow is a splendid valley crag providing a selection of routes to accommodate most tastes. Offering fast-drying wall climbing on clean and solid rhyolite, it is a popular refuge for climbers when the higher crags are wet. Called Low Crag on OS maps, it is anything but. An array of steep buttresses forming a mountain in itself, it has an appropriately precipitous skyline. It further enhances its impregnable air by overlooking woods of silver birch and oak carpeted with bracken.
Taken from the 1993 edition of the FRCC guide to Dow, Duddon and Slate

Hidden away in the sleepy Duddon valley, Wallowbarrow is a great climbing venue, with a very friendly atmosphere. It is particularly good for routes from VD to VS, many with spacious stances, and it offers great climbing in a lovely location – perfect for unwinding and slowing down.

Here’s my selection of must-do routes:

Wall & Corner

First climbed: 1951
Current grade: VD*
Length of route: 58m
Number of pitches: 4

Trinity Slabs

First climbed: 1951
Current grade: VD**
Length of route: 60m
Number of pitches: 4

Thomas

First climbed: 1955
Current grade: S**
Length of route: 57m
Number of pitches: 3

Digitation

First climbed: 1963
Current grade: MVS 4b**
Length of route: 48m
Number of pitches: 2

Bryanston

First climbed: 1956
Current grade: MVS 4b**
Length of route: 53m
Number of pitches: 3

What’s your favourite route on Wallowbarrow, and why? We’d love to hear your stories.