Friday 17 February 2012

Snowdonia - Carnedd y Cribau

Today was by far the worst day of the trip - as Im sure you'll see if you bother to read on!


Weather Forecast - 35-50mph westerly winds, extensive wind chill; Rain and drizzle; Low cloud basing around 500m; 4 degrees centigrade at 900m; 10% chance of cloud free summit
Courtesy of MWIS


Today's route was, to be honest, quite dull. Not much height or distance, but did turn out to be quite a challenge!


We were dropped off at a viewpoint on the A498, directly to the west of the first summit we were aiming for. (Obviously, nothing could actually be seen from it!). A fence was hopped immediately, to get into the national park, and our ascent commenced - following a bearing due east.


More wall hopping (it did become the theme of the day) and continuous, shallow ascent, across the most horrible bog eventually got us to what appeared to be a sharp drop. We had not followed out bearings sufficiently and had tapered off to the left a bit, meaning we needed to head south to get us to where we wanted.


View from Canedd-y-Crinbau on a good day. Thanks to this website
We did so and did finally reach the first summit - which really wasnt that spectacular at a mere 591m. At this point, our route continued south along a very long fence line. Simple, you might say. Oh no! Due to the ground quality this fence was more of an obstruction than a guide to our route. We must have jumped over it more than twenty times to avoid drenching our boots in deep bog - and it turns out it was all a lost cause anyway.
The long winding fence did at last come to another point on the map we could recognise, a crossing with a bridleway. At this point, we made the decision that, due to the weather, we were not making enough progress to get past Llyn Edno and down into Bethgelert, but were forced to cut down towards the road just before Moel Meirch.


This, of course, meant continuing along the fence line - just not as long as we had planned. So we did. Eventually, we got to where we thought the path should be on the right, just shot of reaching Moel Meirch and headed west, and down.


Most awful part of the day in my opinion. The mud and wet was unbearable. By this time, most of our boots were already sodden and it was just refreshing the water within them to be fair, but it was not great on the feet one bit. Otherwise pretty much the same as the long slog along the fence line.


Slowly but surely, the ground to eventually begin to level out and the road was almost in sight, just one obstacle in our way - a maze of rhododendrons. You might say "Its only a few bushes - itll be fine!" but no. Just no. It was actually just horrible. 


We attempted to navigate ourselves through this labyrinth but it was no use. Every time we started crawling or climbing through a bush - it became too thick to get through or push pass. Jumping dry stone walls didnt help and we were eventually just going round and  round in circles - we had to find an alternative route out.


This, of course, meant heading back up - luckily only 200m or so to the river - which could be easily followed down to the road - or so we thought... 


Thankfully, we were correct, it just wasnt that simple. Following the river would involve swimming and therefore, getting round some more rhododendron bushes was necessary. However, they were more dispersed and fine to tackle.


Finally down on farm land we crossed the footbridge and eventually got back onto the A498. But, this was not the end of our route. We had arranged to be collected in Bethgelert. Yup - you guessed it. We had to trudge along the road for 2k or so before getting on the bus - just as wet as yesterday if not more, and much more miserable...

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