South Lakes April 2015

Sun Halo.

At the start of the month a golden ring appeared in the sky……the sun halo that is, without being blinded we took a picture and researched what it was all about.

A mix of chemistry, physics and geometry are the main components for sun halos. At high enough altitudes in the sky, the water vapour condenses and then freezes into ice crystals. As sunlight passes through the ice crystals, the geometry of the crystals cause the light to refract, similar to what happens when light passes through a prism.

It is thought that randomly-oriented hexagonal ice crystals with diameters less than 20.5 micrometres are responsible for the halo observed in the sky. This geometric size and shape causes light to undergo two refractions, or bends, as the light passes through the ice crystal. Once the second bend is made, the light appears as a halo in the sky.



Hell bags and Helicopters.

We had a week of clear skies for bag filling and for when the helicopter was flying. Even better we had plenty of help from the other rangers at Boon Crag office to help up fill the one hundred bags.



Three peaks Clean-up challenge.

The national three peaks challenge involves climbing the highest mountain in each of the three countries comprising Great Britain; England, Scotland and Wales. Undoubtable this mass influx of people has an impact on the mountains. As part of a united effort, groups of volunteers have been on a clean-up challenge on Scafell, Ben Nevis and Snowdon.

A team of Thirty four, both Fix the Fells staff and volunteers headed up to Scafell Pike as part of the clean-up challenge; picking litter clearing drains and sweeping paths. In total they cleared 25 miles of path from all the routes from Borrowdale and Wasdale to the summit of Scafell Pike. Groups  arrived  to the summit from  Piers  Gill,  Sty  Head,  Brown  Tongue,  Hollowstones   and  the  Corridor  route. 



Coast to coast.

The coast to coast walk from St Bees to Robin hoods bay is one of the most popular walks in England covering a wide variety of terrain. It attracts walkers from all over the world making it a great path to work on as you meet and chat with Australians, Swedes, Dutch, Americans, etc. We started tallying up the nationalities, most folk passing through at that time were Americans from the east and west coast, guess it would take a big longer if they were to do the same back home!

Jake and Theo studying at Ambleside University worked on the path running along Tongue Gill which is part of the coast to coast route.  This was a two week work placement, from which they had to submit a report on a chosen topic. Jake topic was on how walkers perceive the work being carried out on the paths. They received a lot of positive comments from people walking the Coast to Coast especially having completed the stepping stones below.

Job done! Jake and Theo moved on to build a drain, where the stone were mere pebbles in comparison.



After a week of summer weather, winter bite back followed. Towards the snow line Fix the Fells volunteers were starting the final work to be carried out on tongue this season.



 Thanks again for all your hard work!



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