We were fortunate with the weather this weekend as I headed into Snowdonia with a group of cadets from Oswestry School CCF. A couple of times a year, they put on an Adventure Education weekend, normally using the Army Training Camp at Capel Curig as their base for the trip.
We had about 18 students in all on the weekend with 2 staff and 6 instructors making the supervision ratios fairly impressive. A number of the students have put their names down to go on an Alpine trip in the Summer, and the weekend was providing them with the opportunity to do some relevant training towards it. As a result, they were working with one instructor per pair, using appropriate rope work.
Jason and I had a group of more traditional walkers each. On Saturday, we headed up into the Carneddau. From the A5 by Llyn Ogwen, my group went up to Ffynnon Lloer before taking the south east ridge up to Pen Yr Ole Wen. It’s a nice little ridge with some short and simple scrambling sections that, on a nice day, can give some awesome views looking along the valley and across to the Tryfan and the Glyders.
At the top, we discussed the importance of leaving the summit of any hill or mountain in the right direction. As if to emphasise my point of how easy this can be to get wrong, we met a couple that told us where they were planning on going before heading off in the wrong direction. Thankfully for them, the cloud lifted briefly, and we watched the confused look on their faces as what they saw didn’t match what they were expecting. We then made our way across to Carnedd Dafydd and Carnedd Llewelyn in cloud. One of the lads took a bearing off the map to make sure that we got onto the right ridge to lead us down to the south east towards Ffynnon Llugwy before using the reservoir’s access road to get back to the A5.
Our plan for Sunday was to go up the north ridge of Tryfan. It’s a great scramble that tends to really get people fired up. However, the night had been freezing and, just getting around Capel Curig Training Camp had been surprisingly icy. The thought of spending the day on a north facing ridge, that wouldn’t get any sun, and going a good 600m higher where the temperatures would be about 6 degrees lower, suddenly didn’t seem so appealing. In the end, we decided to go around the west side of mountain, ascending to the saddle at the base of Bristly Ridge, before taking the south ridge to the top of Tryfan. Although there wasn’t that much snow, it was enough to make it pretty slippery in places, and everyone needed to be a little careful.
When we did make it to the top, we were surprised to find so many people up there. The clear blue sky we enjoyed during the morning, must have made Tryfan look like a good idea to lots of folk as well as being responsible for the low temperatures. We had planned on waiting for the ‘Alpine’ groups at the top, as they were climbing routes on the east face but, after 40 minutes, we decided to get down and out of the cold. Having picked our way back down the south ridge to the saddle, we headed off into the valley the east, in the hope of catching sight of the climbers. With no visible sign of them, the popular option was to wait for them in the cafe with a nice hot chocolate.
As always with Oswestry School, the pupils were fantastic this weekend and a pleasure to spend time out on the hills with. I’m already looking forward to the next planned Adventure Education weekend at the end of January. Let’s hope there’s plenty of snow.
