Great Gable, Napes Needle

Great Gable is a mountain in the Lake District, United Kingdom. It is named after its appearance as a pyramid from Wasdale, though it is dome-shaped from most other directions. It is one of the most popular of the Lakeland fells, and there are many different routes to the summit. Great Gable is linked by the high pass of Windy Gap to its smaller sister hill, Green Gable, and by the lower pass of Beck Head to its western neighbour, Kirk Fell.

Summit The summit of Great Gable is strewn with boulders and the highest point marked by a rock outcrop set with a cairn. There is a plaque set on the summit rock commemorating those members of the Fell & Rock Climbing Club who died in World War I; an annual memorial service is held here on Remembrance Sunday. The club bought 3,000 acres of land including Great Gable and donated it to the National Trust in memory of these members, and the plaque was dedicated on Whit Sunday 1924 by Geoffrey Winthrop Young in front of 500 people. The bronze memorial, weighing 70 kg, was removed on 10 July 2013 by 13 soldiers and carried down the hill via a stretcher. A replacement, with spelling errors corrected, was installed by Royal Engineers in October 2013.

Rock climbing Great Gable has cliffs to the north (Gable Crag) and south (Westmorland Crags, the Napes, and Kern Knotts). The Napes are important in the history of English rock climbing: Walter Parry Haskett Smith's ascent of the detached pinnacle of Napes Needle in June 1886 (now graded Hard Severe). It is thought by some to mark the origins in England of rock climbing as a sport in its own right. A BBC documentary by Eye to Eye on the history of mountaineering in 1956 filmed Monica Jackson with Horace "Rusty" Westmoreland climbing it.