The Ascent to Snowdon: Snow jokes and an icy reception

Hamish - Having stayed overnight in Bangor, Darren and I zipped down to Pen Y Pass just after the crack of dawn. The drive was relatively uneventful, though we did manage to get lost even WITH the satnav - an omen of what was to come? We hoped not.

"V suspicious looking mist"

Upon arrival we quickly realised quite how much snow there was. I mean it was beautiful. Harsh black rock, cut with the white snow and the blue sky - there wasn't even much wind at first, which made the opening stretch of the walk relatively nice. There was a small issue though - THE ICE. Upon arrival we jumped straight for the "hard" route to the pass, which slowly climbed up the outside of the horseshoe on a steep mountainside path. The steps of those who had been walking there over the past days had frozen, and refrozen, and made a nice slippery hell for us to bob around on.

Luckily my shoes seemed to have decided to be relatively grippy under these conditions.

Darren - sadly mine went the opposite way - every step I took I looked like a first time skater.

Hamish - and I was definitely very supportive. Over my laughter.

Darren - but yeah then we went to scale the mountain, going up the winding stone pathway/stairway/rockscramble that was the path. We found ourselves taking a while, because the defrosting snow was making every step a balancing effort. Eventually we popped out at a stile, finally seeing the lakes around which the horseshoe wound. We then wandered along the side of "Crib Goch", enjoying the strangely flat route. Below we could see people on the "easier" route, wandering along the lakeside.

Dat view tho

Hamish - we walked on for some time looping round the mountains, till finally we saw the ascent to Snowdon ahead of us. We then bumped into a very serious looking walker-type who gave us a grave warning (it felt very gandalf "keep it secret keep it safe") - basically he said he'd been scaling these mountains for about 30 years, and the current conditions were some of the worst he'd seen it. It seemed that further up there was a "zig zag" leading up to the peak, where the defrosting snow had made something of a death-trap. He had slipped about 10 feet before catching hold with his ice axe, but said without those and crampons (like little spikes you can attach to your boots to get more grip) we'd get wrecked.

Darren - given my boots were already a nightmare it felt like solid advice, but we'd come here to do a job so we resolved to get as high as we could before retreating. The next stretch was very steep, and wound its way above a second mini lake below. We wandered past one bizarre bloke who had taken the "easy route" and then for some reason unknown to man decided to scale the side of the mountain rather than taking a hazy path we could see along the way. We spent a bit of time watching him scrabbling up the cliff face, and then helped him up onto the side. Here was a bloke who was even less prepared than we were, as he was wearing trainers and lacked hiking sticks - we passed on the hiker's warning and continued our ascent, leaving him panting, lapping up the rays at the pathside.

It was almost tempting to sledge back down full speed. Till you noticed the drops...

Hamish - We then found out why he'd tried the ascent the way he had - it seemed the usual path for the easy route had become obscured by the snow, leaving a kind of free-for-all up the side of the mountain when people had realised that they needed to get up. We looked down, shook our heads, and continued on up. At this point the snow drifts were often over a metre high, and you could stick your feet in the snow unsure of whether you'd go up to your ankles or your waist. It became like going up the side of a slide, only one where you could try to get up the side by jabbing into the snow. We took a kind of "jab your hands in, make a hollow, and use it to place your foot" style, which gave us a bit more leeway as we got up.

Darren - eventually the predictions of the hiker came to pass. We saw the zig-zag at the top, with most people turning back from it, with a few souls bearing intense gear pressing on up. My boots were a bloody deathtrap at this point, and while we felt that we could probably make it UP the zigag, getting down would be another matter entirely. This also kind of messed up our plans to do the rest of the horseshoe - without being able to reach the peak we couldn't loop round the rest of the mountains. A glance at our map confirmed that alternate routes wouldn't get any better.

Hamish - Resigned we turned back and slid our way down the mountain. YES SLID. We soon realised stepping down was, from a balance perspective, bloody insane, so instead we adopted a slip and slide routine. The trick was to slide without catapaulting off the side of a cliff. It felt like extreme sledging - but hey when needs must! We slid down to the usual way down to the easy route and went "well for variety's sake lets descend by this, I mean how bad can it be?"

Got a cold reception from this stream on our way down

Darren - famous last words. It soon proved too randomly rocky to slide, so instead we tried descending by climbing backwards, along with stepping through untouched snow (as that gave you better grip). Difficulty was, the snow had frozen over on top of some mountain streams, so we would be traversing down only to find a random hole down to a stream. They never went more than about 4 foot down, but the impending fear of leg breaking added an extra note of caution to our descent.

Hamish - Finally we got to the bottom. We then wound around the lake, and took a bit of a detour around some of the lesser foothills of snowdon to make up the last of our 10 hours. As we finished up, we looked back to the mountain that had defeated us. Someday we would return. It's only a british mountain after all, how dare it stop our quest?!

Darren - We'd done what we'd set out to do though, between us we'd raised over £400 for IRMO, and along with the rest of the team we are now sitting at over £1200! If we were to be really poetic we could strike a comparison between our journey and that of indoamerican refugees coming to this country - if they had the right resources, support and education they could climb the mountain to thrive in their new home. Similarly if we had had the right education we would have brought some bloody ice axes.

Who left their sunglasses at the bottom of their bag? #guiltyascharged

So thanks for reading and supporting! If you haven't already, donation to IRMO (you can find out more about their great work here: LINK), and maybe they'll be able to get the ice axes they need to climb their mountain.

Hammy and Dazza out xoxoxox