I must admit that I tend not to head to Snowdon very often. It’s a beautiful mountain with lots of variety in terms of walks and scrambles, but it can be a bit of a motorway. Elsewhere in the Snowdonia National Park, you can often walk all day without seeing another soul, but this is certainly not the case on Snowdon itself. It’s variety of well made up paths and a train to the summit, combined with the fact that it’s the highest peak in England and Wales, makes it a magnet to casual walkers and tourists. However, like old friends, it’s good to drop in and see them again every once in a while!

I spent the day with a group of Year 11 boys and staff from The Grange School in Leicestershire who are staying in Nant Gwynant for the week. They have a variety of activities planned for the week including high ropes, raft building, coasteering and (you guessed it) a mountain day up Snowdon with me.

This was actually booked back in January, and all the planning had been done for an ascent up the Watkin Path which starts right beside their accommodation for the week. I’d actually done this route with last year’s group from The Grange and, although it proved to be a long day, it was a fantastic experience and one which we wanted to recreate. Unfortunately, the weather had different ideas. Last years ascent was blessed with sunshine and a calm day. The forecast for today was the total opposite, with heavy rain, low cloud and Southerly winds of 50 (gusting 60) miles per hour, and temperatures at the summit of 5 degrees (feeling like -8 degrees in the wind) – certainly not a day to take a novice group onto some fairly exposed ground.

After a hasty look at the map I decided to change the plan but, for the sake of the boys, was keen to still get to the top of Snowdon if we could. We took a minibus up to Pen-y-Pass before taking the Miners Track in the knowledge that the Bwlchysaethau ridge would shelter us from the ferocious wind. We still had the heavy rain to contend with but at least it was reasonably vertical. Some of the boys were a bit reluctant to get their waterproofs on to start with, but I suspect they won’t make that mistake again! As it turned out, the rain eased right off after about an hour and, with the body heat we were all generating, we started to dry out slowly.

My plan had been to get us as close to the top as possible without exposing the group to the high winds. I knew that the crunch time would be 500m from the top when we would be in the wind and I would have to decide whether or not it was appropriate to make the final push for the top or retreat having got so close. In the event the wind was not as strong as expected and, although it was pretty blustery, there was no reason to abort our mission to the summit. With an impressive burst of speed from some of the boys, we arrived at the top for some quick group victory photos before beating a retreat into the cafe.

While we were enjoying the warmth of the shelter and a cup of coffee, the cloud started to lift to give brief but impressive views across Snowdonia, Anglesey and the Irish Sea. It was interesting for the boys to see how quickly conditions can change. By the time we started our way down, the cloud had lifted completely and we were even blessed with blue skies for a while.

After all the trials of the ascent, our walk down the Pyg Track back to Pen-y-Pass seemed like a pleasant stroll in a completely different world. The boys could now see the beauty of where they had been all morning, but were simply unable to see it through the cloud. We were even fortunate enough to be able to watch an impressive display from an RAF Chinook helicopter (presumably on pre-deployment training) touching down on a rock outcrop just to the north of the A4086 towards Llanberis.

All in all, it was a day I think the lads will remember for a long time.