On Monday the 10th August, I joined my uncle Mike and my cousin Eve, and others to climb the Welsh Three peaks for my uncles Charity called ‘Hope4Families’.
Crib gosh is a knife edged Arete on Mt Snowdon. Translated into English it means Red Ridge.
We drove up on the Monday morning, it was a long drive taking us five hours. We arrived at the camp site in Nantperis and setup our tent. We’d got a new tent for the trip, it looked good when we set it up. However over the next two days we realised it wasn’t very good as it leaked.
That evening I ate hotdogs with my cousin and had some coca cola. After a good sleep, I got up and had breakfast before we set off at 8am. We parked at Pen y Pass car park, and after paying for the parking, we set off.
The start of the walk was the same as the pig track, which I’ve climbed several times before. It was a good path, with lots of rocky steps, and we made short time to the style that crossed the fence and created the junction between the pig track and Crib Goch. We turned off at Crib Goch, and followed the trail up a winding, twisting route up the mountain until it turned quite steep and we had to scramble using hands and feet.
As we were halfway up the path to the ridge, we were standing on a small ledge and a helicopter from the HM Coastguard came and started carrying out a rescue of an injured climber who was on Crib Goch below us. It was amazing to watch, but was a visual reminder how dangerous the route is.
The route involved some steep climbing in sections, then following small gravel tracks, then more steep climbing, meandering around the huge boulders and rocky outcrops.
After a while, we reached the ridge of Crib Goch. This was really exposed and huge steep drops on both sides of the ridge plunging down into the valley far below.
We edged our way along the ridge, at times gingerly creeping along it and at other times having no issues with the route. It was busy up there, we saw lots of other people on the route and at times we were queuing along the way.
After crossing the ridge, there were three rocky pinnacles that we had to go around and over, at one point I had to lower myself through a crack between two rocks, onto the small col between the pinnacles. We then climbed around them and dropped down onto a grassy col between Crib Goch and a peak called Garnedd Ugain. We traversed around Garnedd Ugain and joined the top of the Pyg track at Bwlch Glas standing stone, before heading to the summit of Snowdon.
As usual it was really busy on the summit, so we took a group photo before popping into the cafe for some lunch. I had ham sandwiches, a coke and some chocolate. We rested for a while before heading down the Pyg track back to Pen y Pass. It was along day, taking 9 hours in total, but I loved it. It was tough, and I was tired at the end of it, but I really enjoyed it.
Once we got down, we headed off to Dolgellau where we set up our camp for the night. Tomorrow my Uncle is going to climb Cader Idris, I’m not this time, but I want to in the future.
Joshua Lewis 