SNOW-donia

I apologise right now for the awful ‘pun’ or whatever it would be called in the title but if I had to sum up the trip concisely (which I won’t be doing as it is just not my style) that would do nicely. I went away with the guys and gals from Ben Lairig again last weekend to the wilds of Wales. It was a really nice trip as they are all people that I have walked with before and have been hanging out with on Wednesday nights since the start of the term so we are all comfortable with each other and get on really well. We left Uni at about ten past six, cursing the Lacrosse team to the skies as they had run off with the keys to the joint stores that we share and thus we were down one tent and two stoves. We drove to Snowdonia and set up camp in the rain as usual and it was decided that sleeping two members in a car would be better than ramming the tents full as that would lead to a huge build up of condensation etc.

So Matt and I spent another weekend sleeping in a car meaning that I have actually yet to camp on a Ben Lairig trip in the purest sense of the world but at that point I couldn’t care less as we had just discovered how ludicrously comfy Jamie’s car was! We rose the next morning and cooked breakfast while exclaiming how much Snow there was on Snowdon already and how that would be a great walk to do. And it was, we did about half the ascent before we hit the snow on the ground and just as we did fresh snow began to fall, and fast. However we took it slow and the more experienced members of our group took the lead and the tail of the group and taught us how to check our footing etc. We made it to the top and sat in a shelter and had lunch were we all discovered how much of our equipment had frozen. My glasses, camera and the outside of my coat had frozen but I hadn’t noticed, proving how warm my coat was on the inside. We made a slow and carful descent with no mishaps at all. Once we were off the mountain proper and the ice I almost immediately fell over as I had stopped concentrating and got careless, nothing was hurt but my pride but it proves how much you need to concentrate at all times, no matter what the conditions are.

We then went gear shopping as the pub near the campsite was expensive and as it gets dark so early you end up spending upwards of 7 hours there if you head to a pub straight after a walk, the Langdale walk of two weeks ago being a case in point, in the end we didn’t go to that pub at all and instead walked 2 miles (what we do best) down the road to a much better one!

The next day we were all knackered so we didn’t actually set off on our walk till 12.20 leaving us with only 4 hours of tangible daylight to play with. We climbed a mountain that I can’t remember what it was called (Its called Moel Siabod). It was wonderful walk as the mountain had been quarried to death a long time ago leaving a steep but well worn path up to a good scrambling face as well as a long river running through 3 lakes. We took what the mountain had given us and decided that a good bit of scrambling would get us to the top the quickest. So we climbed up slowly but surely and reached the top by about 3 were we found that this too had frozen and had snow, we just hadn’t been able to see it from the ground. A quick lunch stop in the shelter at the top and then a slow but smooth descent down the ‘tourist’ side of the mountain saw us down in an hour just as it began to get dark and rain meaning that the walk was timed near perfectly. We had a drink of hot chocolate in the pub to warm up and pay for the parking and then we drove home listening to Abba and stopping at a service station for a dubious sandwich. I returned home to my house mates who, having checked the weather on the news were I was out decided that I was both mad and ‘way hard-core’ once more

A great weekend!