Happy Wednesday everyone, and welcome to a little bit of a different post for today’s Blogtober. Last week my friends and I were out for a drink to get me past the first day of my cancelled China trip, and we decided that climbing Mount Snowdon seemed like a fun challenge for us. So, in the space of a week, we’d planned, booked, and bought walking boots for a hiking expedition in Wales. And it was pulled off yesterday.
We went up on Monday to a hostel we’d booked, the YHA Pen Y Pass, which turned out to be right under two of the path choices up to the peak of Snowdon. Which was lucky, as we’d booked this one by accident thinking it was one of the others in the area.
The choices from our hostel were either the PYG path, or the Miner’s path. We choose to follow the PYG path, as it was the more challenging of the two, and we wanted to test ourselves. We had a big breakfast in the hostel, and then set off about 9:30am. There were already a few people in the car park getting ready to head up as well, but we were the only ones who set off when we did, so we didn’t really have any other people around much as we were climbing.
Part of choosing the route we did meant that not a lot of it was a pathway, a lot of it meant clambering around on rocks, and that was right from the start. But straight from the off the views were incredible – I had to keep stopping myself from being the cheesy one of the group reminding everyone else how stunning it actually was.
When we set off the views were of the valley leading from where we’d stayed down into the next town, surrounded by other hills and mountains. Then when you cut through two of the mountains to the other side of the valley, you get view after view of the middle lakes, and mountains through the clouds in the distance.
For that part it was a pretty straight forward, if a bit bumpy, path along the edge of the mountains, and not particularly steep or upwards at all. Then, when you reach the end of the gorge, you start to make the ascent into the clouds. On a clear day I don’t think you’d be heading into the clouds, but we’d picked a day when we very much were. This is the part where it also started to get a bit hairy – being up higher the wind had picked up a lot, and the pathway gradually disappeared, just leading to about two-meter high rock faces with dips to use of hand and foot holds.
It did become a little daunting at this point – you start to realise that if you can’t hold yourself against the strong wind, or if you slip off one of the rocks you’re holding yourself to, then it probably wouldn’t be a very good ending, and you do remind yourself that the mountain has had a few fatalities – you can’t help but let it cross your mind at one point.
The last point of getting onto the final straight is a slanted rock face with jagged rocks sticking out that you can use to hoist yourself up. Once you’ve clambered up that section it’s pretty much a flat – but still upwards – path to the top. We couldn’t see any further than about eight meters in front of us, so I had no idea how far we had left to go. Eventually the path changed into steps, and the peak came into view.
The peak has a stone marker on it, and one final burst of steps – just in case you had a little more energy in you to get rid of. We took the classic photo at the top, cracked open a drink each to celebrate, and then pretty much headed straight back down – there wasn’t a view to stay and look at, the rain was starting to pick up, and the longer we stayed in the wind the colder we were getting.
Our original plan was to take the Miner’s Path back down, but with the bad weather we decided that we didn’t fancy scaling the rock faces back down again, so instead we took the Llanberis Path back down. The Llanberis Path is the path recommended for first time Snowdon-climbers, and pretty much follows the route of the train – which wasn’t running on the day we climbed anyway. It brought us out in the town of Llanberis, and then it was just a taxi ride back to the car.
This was my first time climbing, not only Snowdon, but anything close to a mountain at all – and it was probably one of the most challenging things I’ve done so far. Having said that I would do it again in a heartbeat. Look out this week for my guide to climbing Snowdon for a first-timer.
xx
