I’d not considered doing any mountains at Christmas as my knee is still recovering from the Arthroscopy in September and I’d not wanted to put any undue stress on the knee but over the past month or so I’ve been walking home every night from work happily listening to Harry Potter and enjoying the walk so I knew the knee was rebuilding itself
I’d secretly been going stir crazy as I’d got a large list of mountains I wanted to do this year and had to put them onto the back burner until spring or summer of 2010.
Paul (LadsDad&Lasses) asked my earlier this year if I wanted to do Snowdon again this winter and I’d told him I’d rather not in case I did anything silly to my knee and had to get lifted of Snowdon
When I saw the weather report for Snowdon over the Christmas break it was just like a magnet. Snowdon, snow, cold weather, loads of snow expected. I phoned around to see who was available and who had got winter experience on hills and Andrew, my younger brother stepped forward.
On Tuesday 29 I checked the weather forecasts all day, they all said the same. Snowdonia, high winds, deep snow and freezing temperatures. Freezing levels at 200m. Oggy MRT had been on the TV warning tourists to stay away from the area if they were not winter ready and to ensure Ice axes and crampons were packed for any ascent in the Snowdonia National Park. Well I’ve never bought an ice axe and I’ve not got a pair of crampons.
To be honest I’d only just gone out on Tuesday and bought myself a new pair of winter boots. I got them home and strapped my magic spiders across them; these are a much cheaper version of crampons and are a real bugger to get on
Wednesday morning arrived and Andrew arrived at 0700, we set of for Llanberis and as normal we stopped en-route for a breakfast on the A55 at the Llanberis turn off at the Little-Thief, finally arriving in Victoria Terrace at 0930. The weather was windy even in the sheltered car park. We were the only ones there, no other tourists we were going to have the mountain to ourselves.
I walked up to the pay-meter and paid my dues for the day. £4.00 all day parking and put the ticket in Andrews van and changed into my gear. “The tickets gone!” Andrew said. The fecking welsh pixies had stolen the ticket from the front of his van. So out popped another £4.00 and we made sure this ticket stayed in the van. I know he’ll find that parking ticket one day when he cleans out that van!
As we were getting ready to set off for the hills a couple pulled up next to us with a couple of dogs in the back of their car and asked which was the route up Snowdon from here, I gave them the route and they got themselves ready. We chatted for a while and the bloke from the couple explained that they had just travelled down from the Pen-y-Pass. They’d given up trying to park there as it was not possible. I assumed this was due to everyone on the hill wanting a day in snow. He put me right saying that it was not possible to park due to the amount of snow and cars being abandoned on the side of the road and the car park being inaccessible due to cars slipping and sliding around. I realised we’d made the right decision by walking the Llanberis path that day
As we walked up Victoria Terrace towards the hill the rain was coming down slightly and I was glad to be not walking in my rain gear. The wind had died down here and it was nice to walk in. We could see there was snow on the hills at about 300m and it didn’t look to thick, just more of a heavy scattering. The visibility was mixed depending what direction you looked in. We passed a few people out for a winter walk with young kids and made our way up to the start of the mountain path
As we walked onto the path Oggy MRT had posted a warning note on the gate, “No toilets, No, Café, No train”…..No…. Really
We set off up the path and joked about the weather. The ascent from here gets steep very quickly, so you very quickly gain altitude. It was windy with the occasional gust and we thought nothing much of it. The ground was wet, very wet as though it had been pouring down and we carried on up the side of the hill. We soon started to walk into slush. Some deep, some not so deep
As we got to the cattle gate the slush had turned to hard snow, proper snow, white, cold crystal snow that sat on you when it landed on you and glared back at you. This wasn’t the soft whimpish snow that melted when it landed on you and was gone a moment later
We stopped and looked around. The wind was blowing hard now. It was not possible to walk up the path with your head up without getting a head full of snow. So we’d walk about 100 yards and have a look around
I’d got my watch tied onto the outside of my coat and it was monitoring the temperature. It was already at -8 DegC and every time I checked it I had to remove a layer of snow off the display
We looked back along the track and it was great to not see anyone else on the hillside. We had the footpath to ourselves. As we continued up it was hard to make out where the footpath was, the snow was laying across the sides and the footpath and once or twice Andrew fell into the gulleys that skirt the footpath and went knee deep in snow
In places where the wind had blown the snow away and you could see the footpath, large sections had been covered in ice that turned that section of path into an ice rink, made worse only by the wind blowing directly at us. I was walking on the right hand side of the footpath during one of these sections Andrew attempted to walk across a section of ice. The wind caught him and pushed him backwards along the ice frozen path, I grabbed hold of him and we both slide backwards landing in snow drifts
By this time I’d already set my limits on not reaching the summit and had decided that we would take stock at Halfway house and go no further than clogywn station. It was simply not going to be possible, the weather men had got it right and I wasn’t going to risk much more
We stopped for a quick breather underneath the railway bridge and admired the snow drifts and attempted to shelter out of the gale that was blowing through the tunnel before going on. We needed a rest. Walking with your head down and having to glance up is hard going
There was a group of around 4 or 5 people walking towards us, down the hill. We thought we were the first ones on the hill. They seemed to be walking with a mission in mind, presumably to get off the hill. We stopped them and spoke. They had decided to turn around at Halfway house, it was simply not possible to get any further. They were well equipped and looked very experienced. I realised I set my sights right and we said our goodbyes and plodded on.
The wind was getting much stronger now, at times we’d have to simply drop to the ground to get out of the wind, the snow in our face was burning with cold and we were white on our fronts. Every so often the wind would catch up and we’d turn side ways and dig into the wind just to stay up right
As we walked up it was not obvious to see where these other people had come from, the snow was blowing so hard in the wind that any footprints had simply been covered up and the footpath disappeared once more into a big slag of snow that was indistinguishable from the sides. This wasn’t so bad in parts as it was easier to walk on the ridges rather than the path but every so often we’d find a gulley and Andrew would fall down it again, up to his knees in snow. At one stage I found a hole and disappeared down it up to my knees. It was comical. We’d never both been in snow that deep before. We had to laugh at it or it was not worth going on.
As we looked up to see where we were going a huge snow bank appeared out of the white haze in front of us. It came across from the left hand side of the path which was higher than the path and sloped all the way down to the right hand edge of the path, it must have been over 6 feet deep. The right hand side sloped off down the side of the mountain. It looked never ending, if only because we could not see the end of it due to the low cloud cover and the wind pouring into our faces. We started across it on the right hand side leaning into the left. Our feet just sunk at every footstep, up to my knees then not as deep, then up to my knees then not as deep. It was knackering. We were taking small steps and then resting
Andrew turned around to me and pointed out the Halfway house. It was about 150 metres away. We’d both decided that was the summit as far as we were concerned. We made our way through the snow bank and onto the rocks on the footpath. Every step now was being pushed back by the wind and all I wanted to do was get to the building and shelter out of the wind. The snow I could cope with, the wind was gusting at over 45mph I reckon. We got to the north corner of the building and held onto the railings for safety. We’d done it. That was it. There was no bloody way I was going to go any further that day. The wind was being tunnelled down the footpath between the side of the building and the mountain path whipping up snow and making any further ascent past it impossible
We had a quick drink and decided to make our way back down the hill. A few others had caught us up and had come to the same decision, it simply was not worth it. We took out my poles and started to walk back down the path. Every footstep we used the poles to brace against. We were now walking with the wind and this made it much dangerous. At times the wind would catch us and spin us around or push us down the path. We got to the snow bank and could not see the path we’d made through it. 15 minutes of wind and snow had simply covered everything back up and made it look fresh and clean again and deep and dangerous. We made our way back through it and continued down. We could now see people walking up the hill, at last we were able to walk with our heads up and see where we were going. The path looked so different to the path we had walked up. We could see all the snow drifts. We still could not see any footprints in the snow but we were making good time walking down, the wind was helping us. We decided to stop at the railway bridge once more and have a rest.
As we looked up we met the couple who we’d spoken to by the car. He we determined and was sporting an ice axe out of his rucksack, she was barely visible, all I could see where he eyes in her hood. The two dogs they had with them were crying, they were cold and very frightened and covered in snow, even with their dayglo coats on the dogs were cold. He said they were only going to walk as far as halfway house before turning back and we told them about the rest of the journey up the hill before leaving them to their day
As we carried on down the hill we could feel the wind subside and it was nice just to be able to stand in a quiet area of the footpath and not be buffeted around or be drenched with snow.
The snow was now getting less firm under foot and was turning into a softer gentle snow and we realised we’d lost some altitude by the type of snow we were now walking through. The temperature was warming up, if only by a few DegC.
As we got to the cattle gate a party of 4 blokes were walking up the hill. We stopped and spoke for a while. They blatantly did not look like they were ready for a walk up the side of Snowdon. One of them was playing with a scarf and trying to tie it around himself to keep warm, one of them had a rucksack. I asked if they had done an ascent like this before and one of the group stepped forward. I explained about the hazards and made it clear that they needed to be realistic about the days event and we continued on our way
We plodded on down the hill, the wind was not as strong here and the snow was rapidly turning to slush and we were walking through snow melt and streams on the path, it was around mid day and every so often we could see the sun attempting to break through miles of cloud. It wasn’t going to happen. The hills on the other side of the valley were just as covered in snow as they were on our ascent so it wasn’t going to be a better ascent if we turned back and walked back up the hill. Sheep had started to appear on the verges now. They definitely weren’t there on our way up, either that or we simply could not see them due to them looking like snow men
As we got off the mountain path and onto the road we stopped and looked around. The road was wet, there was no snow and it was warmer. I’d taken my hood off to cool down. The wind had stopped and it was not raining. It was a totally different world to that of no more than 500m above us
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