Tuesday 4 January 2011

Winter Mountain Walking in Snowdonia

Yesterday Jen and myself took a quiet winter walk up into the Carneddau. It was a great day to be out with excellent views and light winds the sun even made an appearance late in the day. We headed up the East ridge of Pen yr Ole Wen and round to Carnedd Dafydd negotiating some large patches of old snow. We donned crampons on the ridge leading upto Carnedd Llewelyn as the snow patches got bigger and the consequence of a slip became more serious.

Its sometimes difficult to know when to put on crampons in patchy snow conditions - do you leave them on to walk across bare patches or stop each time to take them off? Crampons are fine to use on bare rock/ground for short periods but are uncomfortable to walk in. Generally if the ground is fairly flat with patchy hard snow and the consequence of a slip just means that I bump my backside then I'll leave them off. However is a slip could turn into a slide or a drop off a cliff I'll put them on and will happily walk across the odd bare patch.
From the summit of Llewelyn we headed down to the Llugwy resevoir and back into Ogwen. A great day out - the hardest thing about the day was working out which of my clothes fitted over my cast!

Winter Skills Courses

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