As above, any suggestions? Preferably avoiding the crowds as long as possible.

Depends on your competency and conditions. There is a faint path which skirts Piers Gill towards Lingmell Col which would be relatively traffic free until you hit the Corridor Route.

TBH though, if you are disciplined enough to leave early, you’ll climb most of the routes without the crowds, and descend happily past their sweaty procession.

when we did it we went up the standard tourist path up lingmell gill and then a nice bit of scramble up the mickledore way is a bit more interesting the main path all the way up.
great fun

Nothing too taxing through, there was kids scrambling up when we were there. Easy to miss the path to the right though if there’s cloud, and we did!

I would say competency goodish (I’m happy on most scrambles, my dad and brother less so but not too bad). Don’t mind doing a few miles too.

Both those look like decent options (as does setting off early) – how does the scrambling on Piers Gill compare to say Snowdon’s South Ridge or Crib Goch?

Don’t get confused – descending Pier’s Ghyll has caused more serious call outs for Wasdale MRT than anywhere else (nobody has sugested going into the Ghyll). My advice – start early and do the standard route in Lingmell to summit. Descend to Mickledore and go down and around by Foxes Tarn to walk up onto Scafell, then descend NWish towards Burnmoor Tarn and back to Wasdale. You’ll see all the interesting crags etc and avoid bombardment on loose scrambles.

Cheers Boxelder – that sounds like a cracking route. I realise this is a how long is a piece of string question, but how early does the main route start getting busy? Are we talking a dawn raid (middle of May, not school holiday) or just reasonably early?

If you up and gone by 8 you should be ok

That’s easily doable. Excellent. I think we’re staying at the NT campsite at Wasdale Head, so we can just roll out and go.

The earlier the better.
Good luck with the weather- boxelder’s route suggestion is a cracker

Aye, it’s the Lakes so I’m fully expecting rain and fog. Never know though, we might get lucky and it snow 😀

Top tip – take a bearing to get off the top. I did this route 2 years ago at easter. A family member gave me the bearing to depart from the top, I thought I’d never need it…

Anyway come the day, loads of people on the tourist route but we left really early. Lovely clear sunny day, had lunch at the top, v jovial, lots of banter….cloud descended, wind got up & no-one around, completely disorientated!!! thank god I had the bearing & compass.

Be warned, the weather changed in minutes & suddenly everyone disappeared. We got back ok.

Yeah that’s good advice, I’ve had similar on Ingleborough before, and on Ben More (and that was coming down the same route!).

I’ve not been up Scafell Pike before so will be making sure we’re well prepared.