Helvellyn via Striding Edge - Helvellyn via Striding Edge - Helvellyn via Striding Edge - Helvellyn via Striding Edge - Helvellyn via Striding Edge - Helvellyn via Striding Edge - Helvellyn via Striding Edge - Helvellyn via Striding Edge - Helvellyn via Striding Edge - Helvellyn via Striding Edge - Helvellyn via Striding Edge - Helvellyn via Striding Edge - Helvellyn via Striding Edge - Helvellyn via Striding Edge - Helvellyn via Striding Edge - Helvellyn via Striding Edge -

It's often stated that Helvellyn is climbed by more people than any other British mountain. (A survey in 1966 recorded up to 600 visitors to the summit per day during the World Cup Finals). It is climbed from all directions, but most people concur that the finest approaches to Helvellyn are from the east, the classic route encompassing the circuit of Red Tarn via the twin ridges of Striding Edge and Swirral Edge.

Striding Edge is particularly exhilirating, a knife-edge ridge which can be traversed along the very crest, or by a narrow path which winds a parallel route a few feet below. Despite its reputation, Striding Edge is only really dangerous in icy conditions (when it's considered a winter Grade I scramble), though a memorial halfway along the ridge does little to help the novice's confidence. This is the Dixon memorial, one of several monuments on Helvellyn, which was erected here to mark the spot where a nineteenth century fox hunter, Roger Dixon, fell to his death way back in 1858. It's located just below the highest point of the ridge, High Spying How, which is regarded as a minor summit in itself by peakbaggers.

The only real difficulty on the Edge is an awkward scramble down a steep chimney at the western end, but this (and the queues that sometimes form above it) can be avoided by taking a path which runs along the south side of the ridge. This can be picked up a little way back. After the chimney, a narrow path leads to the summit plateau, passing the Gough memorial.

Helvellyn's summit cairn is relatively small, most people arriving here tend to congregate at the large cross-shaped wind shelter. The trig pillar is about a hundred yards north west of the main cairn, and the lesser summit of Lower Man (3033' / 925m) is about a half mile away in the same direction.

There are two memorials on the summit. Just south of the shelter, a small tablet celebrates the first successful landing of an aeroplane on a British mountain top by John Leeming and Bert Hinkler in 1926. After a brief stop, they took off in their Avro 585 Gosport, apparently taking a short run straight over the crags above Red Tarn. (The National Park Authority frowns on this sort of thing these days).

The other more prominent monument stands near the path which comes up from Striding Edge. This relates the story of Charles Gough, a Kendal Quaker who fell into the corrie of Red Tarn while making his way over from Patterdale to Wythburn with his dog Foxie on 18 April, 1805. His body was found almost three months later on 20 July, guarded by the emaciated dog, a whch inspired poems by both Sir Walter Scott (Helvellyn) and William Wordsworth (Fidelity, which is quoted on the tableau).

There is an Off-Dartmoor Letterbox near the Dixon Memorial:, Just after ascending High Spying How on the Edge find the Dixon Memorial on left. Box behind memorial 12 paces around corner on same contour until overlooking Nethermost Cove. Find small slanting rock between two large boulders. Box behind stones under smaller rock to right of slanting rock. Summit of High Spying How 88º. GR NY 349149