Snowdon

One of the most iconic and well known mountains on the island known as Britain and I personally call home. Although I am from Yorkshire so the Snowdonia area in Wales is a good 4-5 hours drive away but always worth the trip.

Before I go into this adventure, please know that the Snowdonia area has sooo much more to offer than just a mountain, often these lesser known gems are overshadowed by the mountainous adventure that people travel for but honestly, if or when you do go, have a look around. See the waterfalls, the hidden gems and those pieces that people don't mention. You won't regret it....

 

Backstory

This trip was planned to do just what I mentioned before, me and my friend Simon really wanted to see what was out there, we had completed mount Snowdon on a previous trip so wanted to see a little more of the stunning Welsh countryside as well as reach the summit once more together.

Something we learnt however about the Mountain is there are a lot more routes to reach the summit than what you originally think, although everyone does choose to scale the mountain using either the PYG, Miners or (the those brave enough) Crib Goch. 

For this specific Adventure we decided on the lesser known (to most tourists including us before this weekend) Watkin Path. Which as we found out was named after Sir Edward Watkin and actually the first designated path in Britain, never mind up Snowdon itself. Officially opened in 1892 this is something I would 100% recommend to anyone looking for a new challenge.

What happened?!

Friday we set off in the car, bags packed and ready knowing we will go up the mountain chasing the sunlight ready to camp wherever possible to make the morning hike that little easier. With Simon carrying the stove to have a coffee and porridge and me carrying the tent the initial climb wasn't too bad at all. As we got higher and higher the weather turned slightly against us and the light dwindled making setting up the tent all the more difficult but not impossible.

We laid there in our sodden clothes keeping warm and eating all we needed setting an alarm for 3am to make sure we had plenty of time to scale the final half. Sleeping wasn't all bad, personally sleeping in a tent is nothing new for me, I have loved camping for years, being out in the wild I find sooths the soul and resets the body clock so well.

The alarm rings at 3am and we both wake so quickly, knowing we need to pack the tent and get to the top ready to watch the sunrise all romantically like. We bolt up pack the tent and get the torches out, 1 head torch (Thankfully) and 1 hand torch which wasn't so helpful. The first part of this second stint started well, we made good time, found a solid path and felt great, tired but great.

Here is where the story turns.... Little note for all you adventurers, surprises are nice and often seeing new things are brilliant, but when its pitch black and all you have are a couple of torches, please do your homework.

Little did we know that the Watkin Path isn't always a steady path, apparently you also need to be able to scramble. Mix this with the fact that we only have a couple of torches, carrying way too much gear along with a tent and stove on top. This final part of our journey ended up being quite tough.

Getting to the top was not an easy task, with no prior knowledge of the route and what (in the dark) seemed like a straight plummet down, add to that the 45litre rucksacks on our back and additional weight for no reason fear definitely woke us up that little bit more. But against the odds in our mind, we got through the scramble using our hands and feet as much as possible, we finally found some reasonably flat surface to reach the top and set up a little bit of a base camp to watch the sunrise. 

As you can see by the photo, what a sunrise it was too. One I will never forget with a journey and story to go along with it... but it didn't stop there.

 

The way down...

We didn't want to try and scramble back down the way we came up, so we went a little down from the summit, away from the wind and the cold and set up the stove for a coffee and porridge to fuel the descent.

Here is right where we found, we forgot to bring enough water. We did pack enough for the journey up, but left the rest in the car at the bottom. This situation is less than idea, hydration is obviously key and can be detrimental, in our case this meant no coffee and no way to make our porridge or any other dehydrated food we had brought. We had to laugh otherwise we would cry, but this also meant the whole way down the side of the mountain, again using another route we had never taken to get back to the car. 

All the way down cramp and complaining about the cramp was the name of the game. 

What we learnt

1. Always look where you're going and plan ahead, specially if it's a big adventure.
2. Don't take a weeks worth of clothes for a weekend away
3. Always stop and smell the flowers!

Although we do tell most of this story with the mistakes we made, we also had some of the most beautiful sights of waterfalls and landscapes that will never be forgotten.