Molly - Hellvelyn Trail

Helvellyn Facts: The Lake District's Favourite Fell
The Lake District offers many claims to fame. It contains England’s largest lake, Windermere, England’s deepest lake, Wast Water, England’s highest mountain, Scafell Pike, and is also England’s largest national park. Yet all these records and facts omit what is arguably the Lake District’s most popular fell to climb: Helvellyn.
Few peaks in the Lake District capture the imagination and awe quite like Helvellyn. Perhaps it’s because of the summit’s ridiculously expansive views. Or maybe it’s to do with the thrill of tackling the mountain’s two famous knife-edge ridges: Striding Edge and Swirral Edge.
Helvellyn has enthralled local shepherds, early tourists, poets, painters, writers, and thrill-seekers alike for hundreds of years. To honour this famous mountain, much like we did with Scafell Pike, we wanted to share with you, dear reader, our favourite facts about this celebrated peak.
Helvellyn is roughly 450 million years old.
That may sound pretty old but in geological terms Helvellyn is a youngster. To compare, the mountains in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland, such as those around Torridon or in the Assynt, sit on a bed of Lewisian gneiss that is roughly 3.0-2.7 billion years old! The Black Cuillins on the Isle of Skye, by contrast, were formed around 60 million years ago.
Helvellyn is part of the Borrowdale Volcanic Group of rocks, and was initially formed as a result of a volcanic caldera (a “caldera” is a large volcanic crater, usually formed by a major eruption that collapses the mouth of the volcano).
Its more modern-day shapes and forms are heavily attributed to glaciation, back when the whole of North England was covered in an ice sheet around 28,000-14,700 years BP (before present). In those days Helvellyn would’ve presented as a nunatak; that is, a rocky island protruding above the ice
More recent glaciation, occurring around 12,650-11,550 years BP, gouged out the coves and glaciated valleys to the north and east of Helvellyn’s summit, including the beloved Grisedale and Glenridding valleys, as well as Helvellyn’s two famous arêtes: Striding Edge and Swirral Edge.
Of course, Helvellyn has been shaped by human hands too. Sheep, including our beloved Herdwick, have grazed the land around the mountain for centuries; first as visiting summer flocks when transhumance was more common, then as more permanent flocks when sheep farmers and shepherds settled the Lake District from the Viking-era onwards.
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