Bank holiday Monday and the sun is shining!!  Admittedly, so far it’s been a rather grey and grisly weekend, but no matter, today the sun has got his hat on and it looks like he’s here to stay!  We’d been hoping to get around the horseshoe for quite some time now for the simple reason that it looked quite exciting and a bit more adventurous than just tabbing up the main paths.  Not that there’s anything wrong with the main paths, they’re actually rather varied with great views, but when you’re up in Snowdonia training every weekend, variety is key.

As we are extremely frugal these days we refused to pay for parking so we had to park a fair way from the start of the route at Pen Y Pass.   But never mind, it’s always good to have a bit of a warm up..hmm!  Anyway, we started off by approaching the scramble/climbing sections of Crib Goch.  If there’s a clear route up these sections we certainly didn’t find it, but amused ourselves by picking our own routes up the rock, choosing to play around on some harder sections practicing our climbing.  This is when we had our first casualty!  One of my water bottle’s clearly decided it had had enough of sitting in my pack and while I launched myself up to reach for a handhold it leapt out and threw itself down the rocks, impaling itself and leaking energy ooze everywhere!  Never mind, we’ll be dehydrated on Everest, it’ll add to the training!  (We tell ourselves this during every mishap!)

Onward and upwards, we soon reach the pinnacles and experienced some exposure training!  It was bizarre to experience how cold it was to the right with the rock still peppered with snow and yet there was beautiful sunshine to the less exposed left hand side.  Staying slightly left (wimps!) we picked our way along, stopping every few minutes to absorb the fantastic views and comment on the stunning weather.  We must have commented on the weather every five minutes, very British of us! I think we were in shock as we’d got so used to being out in the wind and rain all the time!

After Crib Goch came Crib Y Ddysgl.  Again, another place to play around on the rocks picking a route through.  We had read in the guide books that it was quite a busy route, but we pretty much had it to ourselves which was great.  I was beginning to wonder if Steve was suffering from some kind of heat exhaustion as he kept stopping and looking behind him for periods of time (there was no-one there!)  and then walking on and suddenly stopping and looking.  He later informed me that he thought he could hear birds chirping and that there must have been nests along the way.  Turns out however that it was the frame in his rucksack causing the noise!  Bless!

We reached Garnedd Ugain, an often unvisited summit which is actually only 20 meters lower than Snowdon.  We decided to have lunch here away from the hustle and bustle on the Snowdon summit and sat taking in the 360 degree views.  Then it was on over the summit of Snowdon and down the southern ridge towards Y Lliwedd.  We stopped briefly to consider the previous weekend’s adventures on this side of Snowdon when the weather had been horrendous with no visibility.  We had lost our way and gone way off track!  Funny how different the weather can be from day to day on the mountains and how prepared for each eventuality you have to be.

The path across the three summits of Y Lliwedd was easier to navigate thanks to the numerous cairns along the way.  It’s amazing how comforting these can be when you are the only ones on the mountain and you’re not sure whether you’re headed in the right direction.  I must admit we did get a bit over excited in our attempt to see who could find the next cairn first (we must have been in shock at being out in the sunshine!)  and then who could place the biggest rock on it.  But hey, we were having fun and it helped us forget our achy limbs!

It was then simply a matter of the walk back down to the car.  Probably the best weather we’ve ever experienced in Snowdonia and a classic route taking in the stunning and inspirational views for miles around.  Not bad for a weekend in Wales!