Mont Blanc for Downderry

We truly were blessed with beautiful weather this Easter bank holiday weekend. Thankfully, Gaëlle and I had arranged to make the most of the long weekend by heading to North Wales. It was to be Gaëlle’s first time walking in the mountains - and it turned out to be a huge success! It was also Gaëlle’s first time roughing it in the hills - sleeping in the car, in lay-bys as close to the start of our next day’s route as possible! She took to it with aplomb though, despite the sore knees and cramped accomodation - it must have been my talent with a trangia, a gas stove and a boil in the bag meal :-).

Hit the “Continue Reading” link to find out exactly what we got up to!

We drove up on Thursday night after work so we had the whole of Friday to get a hill in. I decided to chuck Gaëlle in at the deep end of walking up mountains in this country by taking her up the north ridge of Tryfan in the Ogwen valley. We rolled out of the Honda Hilton early in the morning and started up the track to the north ridge (which was all of 20 feet from where we were parked). Gaëlle was surprised and pleased by the rapid height gain we were able to achieve and was really enjoying the hands on scrambling (putting her climbing and bouldering skills to good use) - see the photo below…

Further up the mountain though, at about 2,500ft, we ran into some trickier scrambling over a substantial drop with some pretty significant exposure (OK, I may have taken us a bit off route!) which almost induced a full on panic attack in Gaëlle. It took us a little while, but she managed to battle through it and get her nerve back (I’m sure she’ll make her own post about it!), and before long we were on the summit…

Saturday was our ‘big’ day. Whilst we were in the Ogwen valley I wanted to hit the summits of all the main Glyderau, especially Y Garn, after having to retreat off in bad weather the year before. I was keen to make it up Y Garn and walk over to Glyder Fawr and back down Y Gribin, a pretty big walk on its own. But if Gaëlle handled that OK, I wanted to make a quick run up to Glyder Fach, before heading down Y Gribin. We paced ourselves well and Gaëlle easily handled the long distances, so we did manage to take in all the summits before heading back down Y Gribin. Check out the photos below…

From left to right: 1. Gaëlle on the summit of Y Garn. 2. The summit of Glyder Fawr, looking over to the Snowdon horseshoe. 3. The two of us taking a breather on the way to Glyder Fach. 4. Me testing the cantilever stone on the summit of Glyder Fach.

As it was Gaëlle’s first time in the hills, and therefore her first time in North Wales, we had to go up Snowdon. We stomped up the PYG track (’the voie normale’ or ’standard’ route up the hill). Snowdon isn’t a pretty mountain, and any charm it might have still harboured due to its height and stature, is ruined by the gaping scar of the railway track that runs up to its summit. The café that used to exist on top was also a shameful scar on the mountain. However, the current situation is possibly worse… we arrived on the top to find three JCBs shifting earth where the café used to be!