07/02/16 - Snowdon - Rhyd-ddu (me)

I knew I wanted to venture more into Snowdonia in 2016, but the weather looked a bit dodgy and I wasn't really sure about doing a completely unknown route in winter, so I played it safe and opted for Snowdon. I chose a route which looked interesting - a little more exposed than Ranger Path.

I arrived at the car park in good time. The weather looked OK, visibility wasn't great, but as I looked up the mountain I couldn't see any snow at all. I took my crampons and axe just in case.

I set off up the path. It was pleasant, but unspectacular. When I eventually got a view of the summit, I could see that it was slightly whitened (salt and pepper), but a couple of walker that I passed on the way down said that it was just icy rather than snow.

The last section was reasonably exposed, with some simple scrambling on the ridge, I also took a more technical final ascent - which was actually quite slippery.

The steps at the end were very slippery, but crampons may not have helped much. I scrambled up the cairn (avoiding the steps, which would have been dangerous), with a very strong wind behind me. 2 guys were sat on top and joking that it was going to be difficult to get down - and they were right,the wind was so strong that it was difficult to twist round to face the cairn to descend back down!

I returned via a slightly different route and considered an additional hill ridge, which looked pretty interesting, but laziness dominated and I returned to the car instead so that I could get some wine and a steak at home....