Britain's Mountain Challenges: Sharp Edge

Trail magazine and the British Mountaineering Council present Britain's Mountain Challenges. It used to be known as Razor Edge, and in this video Trail magazine's Ben Weeks heads up Blencathra to discover just how sharp Sharp Edge really is. The short answer? Very! But the video will show you so much more. For example, much of the ridge's danger comes not from how knife-like it is, but rather from the rounded, polished quality of much of the rock wear uncountable numbers of passing boots have worn the rock smooth. In the wet this makes Sharp Edge a particularly treacherous place to be - there's a reason that a deep groove below a particularly polished and outward-slanting section of the ridge is known by the local mountain rescue team as 'Usual Gully'. But it's far from all doom and gloom. If the sense of exposure doesn't have your eyes screwed shut, the airy views from Sharp Edge are astounding, and aside from the slightly necky move over the smoothest section of rock (affectionately referred to as the 'Bad Step'), the going is fairly easy and well within the abilities of a grade 1 scrambler. Plus, the route finishes on the wide, broad and spectacularly situated summit of Blencathra, from where the views over Keswick and beyond into the heart of Lakeland will erase any nervy memories of the clamber up. Look out for other videos in the Britain's Mountain Challenges series featuring some of the UK's finest and most thrilling mountain landscapes.