Great Gable is not the highest mountain in the Lake District — that is Scafell Pike, 978 metres, two miles to the south-east. It is not the most dramatic in profile, if you are standing in the right place to see Blencathra or Helvellyn's Striding Edge. But Great Gable is the mountain that most Lake District people would name if you asked them which fell best represents what the central Lakes is about.
The reason is partly the shape — the perfect pyramid visible from Wasdale Head, from the summit of the Kirkstone Pass, from Derwentwater, from a dozen other viewpoints across the central fells — and partly the position, which is almost exactly in the centre of the volcanic core of the Lake District, visible from more points than almost any other summit. And partly it is the history. The summit of Great Gable is one of the most significant sites in the story of British mountaineering, and what happened there in November 1924 is worth knowing.
Great Gable's profile — that clean, broad pyramid with the summit appearing slightly left of centre when seen from Wasdale — has been reproduced on the Lake District National Park badge and is probably the most widely recognised single mountain outline in England. From Wasdale Head, at the foot of the mountain, the flanks rise steeply on both sides of the valley to create a composition that looks almost too perfectly composed to be natural.
The geological reason for the shape is the resistance of the Borrowdale Volcanic rock from which Gable is made — a hard, ancient igneous rock that erodes slowly and produces the angular profiles characteristic of the central fells. The surrounding landscape was deeply carved by the Wasdale glacier; the mountain's pyramid emerged from the ice with its fundamental shape already established.
On the summit of Great Gable, at 899 metres, there is a bronze memorial tablet set into the rock. It was placed there on Remembrance Sunday 1924, at a ceremony attended by five hundred members of the Fell and Rock Climbing Club, at the end of a walk up from Wasdale Head in heavy November rain.
The Fell and Rock Climbing Club had purchased the freehold of twelve of the central Lake District fells — including Great Gable — and presented them to the National Trust as a memorial to the 20 club members who had died in the First World War. The ceremony on the summit was the formal dedication. The tablet reads: In glorious and happy memory of those whose names are inscribed below — members of this club who died for their country in the European War, 1914–1918 — these fells were acquired by their fellow members and by them given to the nation in their memory.
Every Remembrance Sunday since 1924, a service has been held on the summit. It continues today.
Great Gable is visible from multiple points on our 8 Lakes and 10 Lakes Full-day tours — particularly from the Wasdale direction on bespoke tours, and from the Kirkstone Pass on the standard routes. Your expert storyteller will point out the profile and explain its significance when conditions allow.
For a dedicated western Lakes day — Wastwater, Wasdale Head, Great Gable from the valley floor — a bespoke tour can be built around the mountain's full story: the geology, the mountaineering history and the memorial.
The western Lakes and Great Gable can be explored on a bespoke tour.