Where To Park

Parking for this Hike is fairly straightforward. I feel If it’s not lockdown or not a weekday, the car park could fill up quite quickly. There is another place to park though, I will show you a picture below. I know for a fact actually, that the car parks in Edale fill up quickly. Be wary that you may struggle to find a place to park. You will be able to find a spot eventually if you be patient. The car park is Barber Booth Car Park.

The Hike

You start this hike by heading up the road for about 10 minutes until you come to a small gate once you cross a bridge. Next to Upper Booth Farm Campsite. You’ll know you are there because you are next to the stream that runs through Crowden Valley. This is where the fun part of the hike begins.

Hiking along Crowden Valley was so good, I need to come back here just to get some amazing long exposure photos, as there are so many small waterfalls along the whole way up. I will show you some of the ones that I got below. I didn’t get a chance to get many as we started the hike at around 2:30 so we didn’t want to be on top of kinder in complete darkness considering there was a lot of Snow up there and only one head torch between two people.

As we approached Crown tower the main point of this hike. The snow started to get deeper. It wasn’t good timing as it started to get a bit scrambly. We persevered nonetheless. The snow was partly the reason we chose to do this hike. Anyway, we made it up to the top of Crowden Tower. I didn’t slip much, if at all. The views on top of Kinder were sensational, as you can see below. We were very look to get these views, as just after this photo was taken, a big grey cloud came over us and it started to hail quite badly.

We were on top of kinder just walking round to a load of different rock formations for about 20-30 minutes. This was very enjoyable just walking round in the snow with the amazing views all around us. We did fall in a few unexpected snow drifts that were up to our waist. Unexpected, and got snow in our boots, but it was funny each time it happened (Which was more than I’d like to admit). Then we noticed we had about a 2-hour hike back to the car, But we would have lost the light before we got down. So we decided to cut down the side of Kinder just before woolpacks to cut onto Jacob’s Ladder below and hopefully save us around an hour as we didn’t want to be stuck up here in the dark.

Now, I’ll get into the descent for you in more detail. As I said, we cut down the side of the mountain. This was steep and could have gone badly so I wouldn’t recommend that you do this if you can avoid it. We tried to be careful and not rush as we did not want to have to call Mountain Rescue to come and get us.

When heading down, there was loads of snow and some steep drop off’s, which we had to watch out for. My girlfriend however did fall once, resulting in her leg becoming submerged in a large snowdrift with the stream running at the bottom, which was hilarious to the both of us (don’t worry though, she’s okay). Just after this part, there was a long patch of thin snow that we slid down on our bums as we could see there was nothing in our way to fall into, we did get soaked doing it- but it saved time and was incredibly fun.

Now we came to a medium-sized stream that we had to cross. Which wasn’t bad apart from the fact my foot slipped and got completely submerged in the lake then, my other foot fell in, I’m so clumsy. Then my girlfriend did the same thing, but she didn’t realize how deep it was in the place she decided to cross, which in turn got her feet soaked too, not that the extra water made much difference due to all the snow all over us. luckily we were close to Jacob’s ladder and therefore we were just a small walk down Jacob’s ladder and along the path and road back to the cars. I will admit I was quite uncomfortable walking in the soaked shoes.

My Opinion

This hike was very eventful, and I loved it. In some places, I thought we weren’t going to get back before sundown, but we just made it. I loved cutting down the side of kinder. I think that will have improved my skill levels and confidence. The views up to the top were stunning as well, possibly some of the best I’ve had in a while. Finally, the snow made this hike stand out from others, I love hiking in the snow, but I haven’t had much chance to do it as I am fairly new to mountain hikes.

Thank you for reading my post I hope that you enjoyed it. For more photos or if you have any feedback. Please leave a comment or send me a DM on Instagram @AlexLeeHiking.

My Ratings

• Difficulty 4.5/5
• Enjoyment 4/5
• Views 4.5/5
• Overall 4/5

If you enjoyed this read, check out more from the Peak District.

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