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Day 34
The wind blew in ever stronger gusts and then it started to rain. I could not sleep and lay there contemplating failure. I wondered if I could possibly find the last obscure Carneddau tops in the mist. If I ran out of time should I just stop in the tent in the rain or should I continue to the planned rendezvous at Bwlch y Ddeufaen? Were the mountains trying to have the last word? At 1.30am I went out of the tent into the bitter wet and windy night. I saw lights twinkling far below which cheered me up a bit. I dozed and woke again just before 5am. I could still see lights below but it was already light enough to get the stove going. It was very noticeable how the days had lengthened since I had started five weeks before. Then it had been a struggle to get up much before 6am.
As I took the tent down I snapped a quick picture of the mist swirling around Carnedd Dafydd but in a few moments the view had disappeared, the mist engulfed me and the rain beat down harder than ever.
It took very little time and effort from this high campsite to reach the summit plateau of Carnedd Llewellyn where I expected to find an enormous cairn. All I found was a medium sized cairn and a windshelter. I tried setting off in every direction from the shelter only to find the ground falling away and every time I aimed for rising ground I arrived back at the same spot. The map gave no indication of anything other than a flat top and although I had been here before I could not remember its topography. I spent a long time wandering around in dreadful conditions of thick mist, gale force wind and driving rain but eventually decided that I must abandon the search. Just as the Tibetans will not drink from a glass without spilling a few drops for the gods so I thought this top is the one for the gods of the mountain. Superstition again? No, not this time; just an excuse for my incompetent navigation!
I had planned to move onto the ridge to Craig Eigiau before visiting the summit of Foel Grach but decided that in these conditions it would be better to start from an exactly known point so I went over the top and forward until I could just see the roof of the little hut which nestles amongst the rocks on the north side of this summit. Then I struck down south-east for the peak which I had annotated in my plan as 'the last straw?'. This obscure little top lay three kilometres away and more than 800 feet below. The ridge was grassy with no sign of a path. I just tried to keep steep ground on my left all the way down, moments of doubt being resolved by the compass, and as expected this resulted in an eventual swing into the strong east wind. At last I found a fence across the ridge which led up to a coxcomb of rocks just as described in the book which was very reassuring. In fact this is not really a separate mountain but just a group of rocky tors at the end of the ridge before it drops abruptly to Llyn Eigiau. The book says that the highest point is not in doubt but this was not really true in the mist. I kept climbing rocky pinnacles only to see a higher one beyond. Eventually I concluded that I had reached the top although I could not be completely certain in these conditions.
On the way back I found a clear track which I had not seen at all on the way down with my obsession to keep to the left of the ridge. Although it petered out higher up it made the reascent go a lot more easily than I had feared, aided by the wind which was now driving behind my right shoulder. I went into the hut for a snack and found three men and a dog who had spent the night there just packing up to go. They deprecated their late start saying that I was the second person to come up from the valley before their departure. 'I camped up here', I said, not wanting to be branded a day-tripper, but I did not tell them that I had just been out on a six kilometre diversion to Craig Eigiau!
No sooner had they departed than another party staggered in, dripping over the floor and exuding the sighs of satisfaction and relief typical of a group which has struggled through the storm to a safe haven. They started to discuss ways of shortening their walk and in which direction to proceed to minimise the impact of the driven rain. As I listened I felt a deep satisfaction with my own situation. I had no decisions to make now. 'The last straw' was behind me, attained with less pain than I had predicted. My momentum towards the end was surely unstoppable. The spectres of the night were dispersed, swept away in the storm. If I failed, because of the weather, to get all the tops today then I would simply return for them tomorrow. Yet failure to find them now seemed unlikely. My next diversion was a westward one and the wild wind would drive me out to the farthest summit.
First I had to follow the clear path northwards until the rocks of Garnedd Uchaf could be seen looming out of the mist and after scrambling over this minor top I dropped down westwards trying to pick up the line of standing stones which the book told me marked the indistinct path along this ill-defined ridge. The mist began to clear which was almost a mixed blessing for I could see how far it was to the farthest outlier, Gyrn Wigau, which the book describes rather accurately as looking like a sleeping dinosaur. Despite being so far west this top was in no way sheltered from the east wind and I had to crawl on hands and knees along the back of the dinosaur to touch its highest rocky spike.
I turned my back on the western seascape for the last time, leaning into the wind as I came down off this hill to battle my way back along the ridge to Drosgl whose slopes of grass interspersed with a few unavoidable patches of boulders provided a temporary relief from the storm until I emerged at the stony summit. There were more stones and boulders to scramble over onto the top of Bera Bach, the first of two tor-like outcrops. Bera Bach, the little hayrick, is in fact the higher of the two but its neighbour, the great hayrick, Bera Fawr, is far more impressive and requires some enjoyable scrambling to attain the rocky knife edge which forms its summit.
Wind is a bit like a nagging toothache, if it goes away you forget about it. So in the pleasure of scrambling around on Bera Fawr I had not noticed that it was no longer necessary to cling to the summit rocks to avoid being blown off. The gale was slowly subsiding into a breeze and as I dropped into the headwaters of the Afon Goch I found a spot sufficiently sheltered to enjoy a brew up at a delightful watersmeet.
This cross-country traverse to Llwytmor took me into a region of bog and heather, the sort of rough territory which I had not encountered for many days on the well trodden ridges of North Wales. I was soon through it onto the grassy cone of the hill and from the top I saw my last mountain, Tal y Fan, for the first time with a great surge of delight. The book told me that it translates, appropriately enough, as End Peak. The wind had discouraged photography today, even after the mist had cleared, but this one was a must!
Turning south I could see the less welcome sight of the long reascent to the last three- thousander, Foel-fras. I was certainly tired and my feet were very sore, a disability more evident on descent, but I did not make too much heavy weather of this 600 foot climb. I was singing inwardly, a song of success, and my mind was dwelling on the happiness of tomorrow and the beauty of this now clear and sunny afternoon so that the physical pain seemed unimportant. Even so I regretted the necessity of the trek out to yet another outlier, Pen y Castell. I thought wryly that perhaps having survived Craig Eigiau this one would really be the last straw, yet this was purely a mental indulgence for there was no chance that I would give up now.
As I climbed the fence to leave the ridge for this last diversion a walker coming down the ridge behind me waved and it was Rowland who had come early to the rendezvous and walked up to Foel Grach. We transferred as much of my equipment as would fit into his small rucksack and he returned to the motorcaravan while I went down to this insignificant heathery outlier whose summit was amongst the farthest cluster of rocks. The ridges were clear now in the evening sunshine but a small cloud still persisted over the very highest top, preventing me from seeing any solution to my confusion of the morning.
I climbed back up to the top of Drum and then swung northwards to the penultimate summit, the last slight bump on the ridge, a top of little significance apart from its ancient cairn, Carnedd y Ddelw. It felt significant however for there beyond it was the north coast and the sea with Anglesey and Puffin Island silhouetted in the light of the sinking sun. This felt like the last top for the one final hill, Tal y Fan, which just tops 2000 feet, stands aloof from the main Carneddau massif to the north-east.
I took one photograph but I did not linger to savour the beauty. I dropped down the ridge totally exhausted and almost staggered to the car. I really was tired, not only after five weeks of walking but in particular after these last two tough days in the Carneddau. Yet the exhaustion was almost as much mental as physical. It seemed right and proper to arrive in a state of near collapse. Had there been another two or three tops to do then I think that the collapse could have been postponed until they were completed. Apart from sore feet I was in a much better state than I had been on arriving at the previous rendezvous at the Milltir Cerrig pass when I really would have been incapable of continuing further.
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