Thursday 16 February 2012

Snowdonia - Moel Siabod

So for the last four days of half-term, I decided that it was about time I got some more hiking done, and get kick-started for 2012 and Snowdonia seemed to be the ideal place to do this. Unfortunately, February is not great if you're hoping for good weather so, all I can say is, the waterproofs got a good bit of testing! Also, I didnt get many photos taken as it was so wet, it wasnt worth the risk taking my non-waterproof camera along out, so apologies for that ;)

Weather Forecast - 35-45mph westerly winds, extensive wind chill; Isolated patches of drizzle; Low cloud basing around 650m; 1 degree centigrade at 900m; 10% chance of cloud free summits
Courtesy of MWIS

Today's route, which was only a half day as we spent the morning travelling, was to get to the top of Moel Siabod. A simple enough route, being able to walk out of Capel Curig up and back down before dusk.

Moel Siabod - concealed by cloud
At first, it was a reasonably straight path, quite steep, through a farm and up towards a very ominous looking mountain, mostly obscured by cloud. So far, the rain had been quite nice and what one would consider to be perfect shell jacket weather; however, it was persistent and a change to full waterproofs had to be made before we continued. 

We got to the end of the easy to follow track at a style, crossed and headed to the left side of the mountain on a smaller path, passing quite a picturesque tarn (lake in a corrie), and slowly began ascent.

Fancy a dip anyone?
At this point we hit a lake displayed in this picture to the left, which didnt look to be much of a tarn, but maybe an ideal bathing spot for the summer! This was where we stopped to refuel of jelly and chocolate before making, what we thought would be the massive push to the top.

The gradient increased as we made our way through an ex slate mine but unfortunately, emerging from this, the path just sort of disappeared and the ground became very very boggy. It became flat once again as we made our way, following a very unobvious path which seemed to come and go quite a bit, but did eventually start its ascent towards the top.

Eventually however, it faded and it was just a scramble to the top - very rocky and slippery in the rain but eventually, in the harsh wind and cold, we found the trig point at the top - height of 872m :)

By this point, my hands had just died. Silly me hadnt thought to put gloves on before touching the cold, wet rocks and I could just not move them. Luckily, we just had to get down, and it only took us an hour or so.

A bearing of around 40 degrees took us down the spur we wanted and hopping over more rocks and bog, we finally made it back down to the track back to the farm. (I would go into more detail but downhill is always the most boring bit).

Very wet, we got back into Capel Curig and boarded the bus back to our hostel - optimistic for the rest of the week. Unfortunately, the high hopes were soon demolished...

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