previous day
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.
next day
Across the Dragon's Back index . . . . . . Welsh Marilyn index . . . . . . my homepage
. . . . . .
GeoCities Yosemite