Sunday's forecast looked great for a day out on the hill - 35-45mph winds, and 'patchy sunshine'. I was keen to get out and see how much snow and ice were on the hills and try to get in at least 1000m of ascent too.
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| A slightly snowy Y Garn on the left |
From Ogwen cottage I decided to head up Y Garn along the footpath on the NE ridge. This would allow me to gain height quickly, check out the condition of the front face and see what wintery state cwm idwal was in.
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| Cwm Idwal |
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| View down the Ogwen valley, Tryfan on the right |
The long uphill slog began and I was already missing my trail running shoes. Pausing by Llyn Clyd to get a look at the snow conditions on the east face, I saw that no one was on it yet, but some people had started down-climbing from the top. The top 100 vertical meters of the face looked quite fun, but below it was all slushy and the ground was not frozen either. At 800m or so I put crampons on as the path now had a solid ice filling on it, and went on to break trail towards the summit. Conditions were definitely mild and the wind forecast was correct, windy, but not too bad.
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| A sunny snowcapped Pen Yr Ole Wen |
Continuing on to Llyn y Cwm, instead of following the 'normal' path up I opted to go up the gully just west as it looked solid and I had never gone that way before. On to the windswept summit of Glyder Fawr and the bad weather didn't look far away. The dark grey clouds over Snowdon and odd sprinkling of hail led me to descent down Y Gribin in the hope that I would avoid the worst of it. Cwm Cneifion had a bit of a cornice on it, and a few people were coming up the gullies too.
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| The top of Cwm Cneifion (the nameless cwm), complete with cornice |
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| Ominous clouds over the snowdon range |
Y Gribin was in good nick, with some solid snow/ice cover until the football field, where it started to turn to slush. From here I walked back to Ogwen Cottage via Llyn Bochlwyd.
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