Snowdon or bust!

This is it, no turning back now. We left Redruth around 7.30 in the evening to head towards Snowdonia, the plan was to reach Snowdons summit for sunrise, would we make it?






After an uneventful drive up, no kips either, we reached the car park at Pen-y-pas just about 1.30am Wednesday. We planned on having a kip for an hour or 2 before heading up the mountain via the Pyg track. I managed 20 minutes of very unsettled broken sleep, saw a couple walkers coming off the mountain by the Miners track around 3am, good to see there are other crazies out there!


We finally set off around 4am and headed up the Pyg track, I'd like to say the scenery was stunning, but black mountains against a black sky doesn't really give you much to see, I shall have to
wait till tomorrow. The pace seemed quite fast, especially for my 1st mountain, still, it's going to be fast on the challenge! It was nice to get some light to see where we were walking without the aid of a headtorch. Big clumps of white stuff littered the mountain side, there was still snow around, which pleased James, all his previous climbs of Snowdon were snowless.


The top of the Pyg track seemed like a different world, the wind! It was a tad windy and blooming cold with it. We still had a 10 minute walk upto the summit. After over 2 hours off climbing up this thing it was nice to see the end in sight, and even better to see nobody else up there! The few steps upto the trig point were hard work, bloody killers to be honest, but to be up there after the hard walking was very relieving. The wind was blowing a good 50mph+ with the 1-2 degrees temperature forecast we were left with a wind chill of -7/8 degrees. It was nigh on impossible to stay upright let alone have my cuppa by the trig point so after a photo or 2 we headed for shelter beside the cafe.



But we made it up there for sunrise, just!

After spending 20 minutes or so up on the summit, photos, cuppa etc etc we headed back down. We descended via the Miners track this time, even the descent was tiring enough. I must admit, I was glad to see the van again! all this to do again tomorrow, via Crib Goch this time.