Snowdon Adventure
During the half term break 10 venture scouts from 29th Belfast Scout group CARRYDUFF travelled to Wales and spent 4 days on the Old school Lodge owned by Wirrel scouts with the aim of climbingSnowdon, the highest mountain in Wales.
Clare McKnight takes up the story.
We left CARRYDUFF on Saturday night 12th Feb and stayed in the den belonging to 130th Priorswood scouts (thank you John) which is close to the Dublin/ Holyhead ferry. On Sunday morning we travelled by ferry to Wales and by mid afternoon we arrived to our hostel. Later that evening, once we had settled in, we went over our plans forthe hike, checking equipment, route plans, weather forecast etc.
The next morning we drove to our starting point close to the Rangers Hostel on the west side of Snowdon and at 9.00am we started ouraccent. We had calculated our route would take 6 and half hours to complete taking into account the distance and gradient with rest time for breaks. Although the first 90 minutes were relatively comfortable with a gentle incline throughout, it was the calm before the storm. As we ascended past 500 metres, the terrain became increasing more steep and at several points we were climbing at 45 degrees across stony tracks.
As we climbed higher the sunshine of the valley below disappeared and we were surrounded by thick cloud cover. Then is started to snow, initially a few wispy flakes flew past our faces but as the speed of the wind increased the snow became thicker and it really started to bite into all our faces. Onwards we climbed and the ground underfoot started to became covered in thin layers of snow. Around two kilometres from the summit, the track such as it was, became completely covered in thick drifts of snow sometime up to our knees but always well past our ankles.
Our outer clothing began to take on eerie features as they became covered in a thin layer of ice and snow, any hair such as eyebrows became encrusted in ice but despite the bitter wind we were all fairly warm due to warm clothes and the exertion of the climb.
We couldn’t see the summit but our leaders had all the necessary equipment to guide us up the chosen route and they slowly lead us to the summit of Snowdon in near white out conditions. As we climbed the final few steps towards the summit we posed for the obligatory photos but only for a few minutes as there was a real danger of being blow off due to gales force winds which we later found out,had peaked with gusts of 60 miles per hour.
We had originally intended to stay around the summit for an hour or so, to eat lunch and rest but the bitter weather and the fact that the shelter house was closed due to the bad conditions, meant we decided to stay only long enough to get food into us and get off the mountainsooner rather than later. One of the unexpected problems we faced was the fact the zips on our back packs were frozen and getting them open proved virtually impossible. The other problem was the liquid in our water bottles had started to turn to ice so those whohad decided to bring hot liquids shared them around.
After 15 minutes we had eaten all that we needed and headed down the mountain. The footprints we had made coming uphad completelydisappeared. Slowly we made our way back down the mountain eventually we breaking through the cloud and once again we were entranced by the beauty of the Welsh valleys. As we the sun shone the ice on our clothes thawed and they returned once again to their natural colours. Over the next hour as we continued with our descent we basked in the warmth of the afternoon sun. At 3.45 we arrived back to our bus, tired but elated.
We all agreed that it had been a daunting climb and far tougher than we had imaginedbut it had been a fantastic experience.
Clare McKnight.
29th Belfast Venture Scout.
The intrepid explorers.
Well wrapped up against the weather.
Whiteout conditions.