The Story Of Snowdon
Yesterday I climbed a mountain. ⛰️
That's a really odd sentence to write.
Yesterday* me and 3 of my friends got up at 12:30 am to go climb and summit Mount Snowdon for sunrise, here's the story.
*Yesterday from the day of writing, not the day this comes out.
So let's rewind to Saturday 7 am, I picked them up and we headed for our first stop, McDonalds - the only logical way to start any road trip. 🚘
After fuelling ourselves and the car we started the 5-hour drive to Dolgellau, Wales. A few stops and a lot of motorway later, we arrived in this quiet little town.
A pub lunch and a look around the town is pretty much all we did for the rest of the day before trying to get to sleep at 7:30 pm, ready for our 12:30 am alarm. 😴
I hate that iPhone alarm on the best of days, at half an hour past midnight, it was even worse.
We got on the road and started the climb at around 2:20 am.
I’m not going to romanticise or sugarcoat things, it fucking sucked.
I am not a hiker, I love the end result don’t get me wrong, but if you’re walking up a steep incline for a prolonged period of time next to me, all you’re going to hear is me bitching and moaning about it. I don’t think I’ve said the phrase ‘whose fucking idea was this’ so many times in a short period of time.
Spoiler alert: it was my idea. 🤦♂️
If you’ve taken the Llanberis track up Snowdon you’ll know that it does flatten out at points so it wasn’t all complaints, and after a good 45 minutes of moaning, we all started to accept the situation and have fun with it. This was our choice at the end of the day!
It was a hell of a climb and we quickly found ourselves surrounded in fog, making EVERYTHING damp.
We got to the summit in 3 hours and 20 minutes, which is a decent pace as far as I’m aware, right in time for sunrise… in theory.
We were instead greeted with thick fog and 40mph winds, making it extremely difficult to even stand at the top!
Regardless, we relished in the fact we had just summited the second tallest mountain in the UK and took some time to take it in and get some photos - we bloody did it boys! 🎉
By this point, we were FREEZING so waiting around to see if the fog cleared wasn’t even a thought in our minds. We headed for the Miners track and started our descent to get out of the winds before taking our first proper break of the day.
Now the Miners Track is where we got to see some of the beauty of Snowdon. So far the entire morning had been pitch black or covered in fog, so we’d not seen much further than 10 metres in front of us. But on the way down the track, the fog slowly began to clear and the beauty of this place started to reveal itself to us.
We were greeted with 2 beautiful lakes that we would be walking around once we scaled down the track and plenty of photo opportunities. The fog also provided us with some incredible images, so I have to give it credit for that!
Our second break came when we reached the first of the lakes and I took the chance to get my new drone up in the air for some quick shots.
We continued the walk around the two lakes, the rain kept coming and passing, but we were so damp it didn’t matter.
Finally after another quick drone flight, we could see the end - the cafe at the end of the Miners Track. Although we could see it, it was still a good 20-minute walk down but we finally completed our journey.
Totalling 7 hours and 10 minutes, we covered 14.9KM, 23,694 steps and climbed 978m to a max elevation of 1068m, the summit of Mount Snowdon - all before 10 am on a Sunday Morning, not bad going if you ask me. 💪
Honestly, regardless of my bitching and moaning, it was incredible. I really need to get into doing this sort of thing more often, not just for the views and obvious attractions to it but because the feeling of accomplishment that has followed me into the next day is unbeatable.
OK, I need a coffee - PEACE ✌️
