Pete Simpson and myself completed a 55 mile – 14000 feet traverse of southern Snowdonia last Friday in a steady 20-55 hours. For those unlikely to take on formidable routes like the Merrionnydd Round it provides a more moderate foray into the area. Some may breathe a sigh of relief to hear that it will not be included in the Over The Hill Challenge Series afterall!!
Anyway here’s a brief report should anyone contemplate exploring the areaPM me if you want summit times.
A late suggestion of a peak-bagging trip to Snowdonia somehow developed into the idea of adding another route to the Over The Hill Challenge series. Coming up with anything original is difficult these days so we opted to re-visit the scene of the Bala Challenge – a 24 hour circuit of 32 peaks covering many of the principal 2000 footers in the Arennigs, Arans and Berwyns which I completed about 20 years ago. This is mean, unforgiving country as anyone familiar with accounts of the Merionnydd Round or Leventon’s Line will know. Being much older (but not much wiser) we were really looking for something less testing! In keeping with the general OTH theme we eventually opted for stringing together a handful of significant peaks which would be do-able in daylight hours or thereabouts. A route linking the 5 Welsh Corbetts (2500 footers) in southern Snowdonia seemed to fit the bill very well. They were:
Cader Berwyn
Arennig Fawr
Aran Fawddy
Glasgwm
Cadair Idris
Finishing on Cadair Idris with views over the estuary seemed particularly attractive while the run across to the Arennigs would give some respite and contrast to the high rugged terrain as well as providing the opportunity for a couple of drink dumps. We added a secondary objective of including 8 additional/optional 2500 footers listed by Nuttall as being on or near the route. To keep the distance down we opted for starting at the car park at the waterfall and cafe at Pistyll Rhaeadr and finishing at the bottom of the pony path off Cadair Idris. To make things simple we decided to adopt the current trend and made it an on-sight, unsupported attempt (with drink drops).
Things went much as expected. We started late (6-40 am) due to a longer than anticipated drive to the start. The forecast of scattered showers for the morning turned into a 3 hour downpour but it brightened in the afternoon to give good visibility. Unfortunately it also meant we were going into an increasingly fresh south-westerly wind. We had an optimistic target of 16 hours but, predictably, darkness, fatigue, mist, a knee problem and the increasingly difficult, steep sometimes scrambly terrain made for slow-going from the Arans onwards. We ended up taking not far off as long as it took to do the Bala Challenge a couple of decades previously !!
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