Garry Peasland - 333504

Horizontal rain and poor visibility with cloud down to 600m.
Waterproofs were needed throughout the hike.
I lead the group consisting of Me and my 2 sons and 2 friends - one of my friends had never been on any mountains previously.

My choice of route was Seniors Ridge to Glyder Fawr and descend via Y Gribin - my lessons learnt - think carefully about route choice for the level of team experience. Have plans A, B, C and D. Think about route choice dependant upon weather conditions - this particular day we had horizontal rain, cloud down 600m with poor visibility and very windy!! Was this the right route choice with these conditions... Initial thoughts was this was the right choice as the seniors route is more sheltered, however with the amount of rain and the high amount of water coming off the mountain this route proved to be difficult and the normal route up the scree right of the slabs proved to be difficult with the crossing of the waterfalls... Anyway, let’s start the story from Ogwen Cottage.

From Ogwen Cottage, we spent some time in the visitor centre as Dave had never been on a mountain and I felt the visitor centre would be a good start to the day, although the weather was miserable.

From the visitor centre we went through Tin Can Alley and followed the footpath on the left side of Llyn Idwal.

We continued along the path past Idwal Slabs over a stream. Just over the stream we took the steep scree to the right-side of Idwal Slabs.

We needed to go quite high up the scene to find a safe place to cross the waterfalls that were coming off the mountains. We found a safe place to cross and then needed to ascend a slab needing a confidence rope, myself and another member of the team were ok with the ascent however on assessing the situation, the drop off was high and the other 3 members of the I found and good anchor and belayed the guys up. I felt very confident with this setup and so did the team.

We progressed around and up to Seniors Ridge. At the point of ascending Senior’s Ridge one member of the team decided that they did not want to continue up the Ridge as the cloud was right down and wanted to descend.

The team decision was to descend, rather than go back down the same route we descended into the Cwb Cneifon and follow a pathway round to the fords of Llyn Bochlwyd. We then followed the steps next to Nant Bochlwyd leading us back to Ogwen Cottage.

Some discussions took place at Llyn Bochlwyd to ascend to Bwlch Tryfan and ascend via Heather Terrace, however 2 other members of the team were wet and wanted to go down.

I felt I had let the team down with a short route, although on reflection I had no control over the weather and I was satisfied with the decisions and route choice I had made to keep the team safe, also involving the team in these desicions.

I did have to over-rule a decision by one member of the team where he wanted to descend without the rest of the team, so that he didn’t complete ruin the day... I reasured this member of the team that first of all he hadn’t, it was the right decision to descend and second I had to make sure everyone was safe. We stick together as a team as it was still a couple of hours descent. On the way down I explained to the team member that if anything happened to him we would not know where he was - he understood and appreciated the decision for the team.

We all ended a testing day at Swallow Falls Hotel ;-for a couple of beers and to take about the day. Dave was not put off by the day, although he did say that the mountains will be like his motorbike - he enjoys them in the good weather haha.

I learnt a lot of lessons on this trip about...
- Route choice for team experience
- Team decision making
- Navigation
- Cofidence roping, and belaying using a good anchor
- On our descent I had taken spare poles - this really paid off as Dave was suffering with his left knee.
- Safety of crossing fords

Great Times
Great Memories