Red Pike (Buttermere)

About Red Pike (Buttermere)

Red Pike belongs to the High Stile range in the western Lake District, forming part of the wall between Ennerdale and the valley holding Buttermere and Crummock Water. Syenite in the rock and subsoil gives the fell its red tone, most obvious where the surface has eroded — the paths can be picked out as red lines from a fair distance.

The direct ascent from Buttermere sees a lot of traffic, and the ridge onward to Haystacks is widely rated among the best in the district, looking out to the Scafells, Great Gable and Pillar. Note the name clash with Red Pike (Wasdale), only about five kilometres away yet not visible from this summit; Wainwright, in The Western Fells, thought the Wasdale hill the higher of the two but the lesser claimant to the name.

Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Red Pike (Buttermere) (CC BY-SA 4.0). Heights, prominence and grid references come from the Database of British & Irish Hills, not from Wikipedia.

Access rights here

General position for England — local byelaws, seasonal restrictions and closures can override it. Full details: access rights in England · check another location.

Daylight at this summit today

Sunrise

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Sunset

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Daylight

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Civil twilight ends

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Computed astronomically for 54.527, -3.299. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.

Finding the summit

The recorded summit point is rock 8m NE of cairn. That distinction matters on broad or flat tops, where the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.

Survey method

Abney level

Record revised

11-Nov-18

Drop measured from

NY 1622 1510 · 714 m

Survey notes are field observations recorded in the Database of British & Irish Hills (v18.3, CC BY 4.0) by the hill-surveying community.

Which hill this one belongs to

Red Pike (Buttermere) is not counted as an independent hill in its own right. In prominence terms it belongs to High Stile (807 m) — the nearest Marilyn you can reach from this summit without first dropping below its key col, 714 m.

Grouping is by prominence alone: a summit belongs to the nearest higher Marilyn it connects to without a deeper intervening col. Over a large massif that can gather hills no one would walk in a single day, and which few would describe as parts of the same mountain — it is a measure of independence, not a suggested route.

Nearest listed peaks