Whinlatter

Whinlatter seen from Graystones

Height: 525m (1,722ft)
Prominence: 58m (190ft)
Region: North Western Fells
Classifications: Dewey, Wainwright, Birkett
Summit feature: Cairn
Times climbed: 1
Related trip report:
A Whinlatter Round - 05/10/2014

The summit -Whinlatter Top

What Wainwright said:

"Whinlatter the Fell, a lonely sheep pasture, is known to few. The abrupt heathery slopes, streaked with long tongues of scree, form an effective northern wall to the Whinlatter pass, and there is little in this rough and forbidding declivity to suggest the pleasant heights above".

Whinlatter is a small fell to the north of the Whinlatter Pass. The fells name originates from a combination of the Old Norse and Gaelic languages. With the Old Norse word 'hvin' meaning gorse or furze, and the Gaelic word 'lettir' meaning slope, the name translates as "The Gorse or furze-covered slope".

The Whinlatter Visitor's Centre, a popular tourist attraction owned by the Forestry Commission, is on the south side of the fell. The conifer forest has a number of attractions.

Ordnance Survey maps of the 1950s showed Brown How to be the summit, a statement Wainwright discussed at some length and proved to be incorrect by his own amateur surveying. Modern maps of the Ordnance Survey appear to have conceded the point marking Whinlatter Top as the highest point.

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