The morning of Sunday 10th July 2005, and the YH provided a very pleasant breakfast of fresh orange juice, cereals, full English (lovely sausages), toast & preserves and tea/coffee, following which we loaded the car and continued the previous day's ritual of applying copious amounts of factor 30 sunblock.  Just as predicted by OXV's lot, it was even hotter today. 

Our first objective was the imposing pyramid of Dufton Pike that looked out over the village, but that was dwarfed by Great Dun Fell and Dufton Fell that almost surrounded it.  This was the summit that I was most worried about, in terms of its very steep sides all around it, its narrow top, and the possibility that the aforementioned higher fells would effectively screen me from the chasers.  This was a very pleasant walk, because it did not involve any driving.  The YH warden was happy for us to leave the car in the car park until early afternoon, so we walked through the village, and down the bridleway as it passed over the Pennine Way.  This is a fairly flat walk for a mile or so before the track starts to gradually ascend as it curves around the base of Dufton Pike.  The pike itself is walled around the bottom, but signed as access land, and there are several gates by which to enter. 

There were many paths and sheep tracks on the steep hillside, but none appeared to offer an ascent, operating more as visible contours.  We decided to zigzag upwards, one objective at a time, and this worked well.  Occasionally, we had a spurt of going directly steeply upwards, which gave us a quick 10m gain and kept the momentum going.  Soon we were on the end of the ridge, from where a clear path appears for the final 80m ascent to the summit.  The summit itself was indeed small and sharp, although there would be enough room for an HF dipole. 

The views were stunning, and it was quite weird to be so relatively high up and yet have fells almost twice the height seemingly within arm's reach. I actually was screened from G4BLH this time, but many other regulars were worked, and the insurance policy of fishing pole and 40m dipole again remained unused.  In fact, this was the easiest summit to qualify, but part of that must go down to the number of regular chasers that were actively monitoring, at "peak" time SOTA speak.  It was incredibly hot, and like Russell G4ZRZ/P who was on Illgill Head G/LD-029, one could feel the sun penetrating and burning through the caked-on sunscreen.  We found the zigzag descent of the steep grassy hillside surprisingly quick and easy, but then laboured on the plod back to Dufton village, despite having got through yet another three litres of water between us.  

Many thanks to the following stations, all worked on 2m FM with 2.5 watts: