Welsh summit

I climbed Mt Snowdon (1,085m) last weekend with a few friends in support of the Motor Neurone Disease charity. There were about 50 people doing the walk both in support of the charity and Jason’s colleague who was recently diagnosed with the disease.

If you would like to support the MND cause (in either $ or £), feel free to follow these links… http://www.mndaust.asn.au/make-a-donation (Australia) or http://www.justgiving.com/high-altitude (UK).

There are numerous alternatives for walking up Mt Snowdon and it is certainly a popular activity. We walked along the Llanberis Path which generally follows the same line as the Snowdon Railway which we went on last year when it was snowing. This path is a 9 mile (14.5km) return trip, climbing an elevation of 972 metres. It is one of the longer paths up Snowdon and is generally considered one of the easiest ways up.

Overall, the walk was tougher than I was expecting, especially considering it was meant to be the “easier” trail. The weather conditions were pretty ordinary as well and I was glad I was prepared for the worst. We encountered rain and strong head-on winds as we climbed up the mountain. Victoria & I had to crawl the last up the last few steps to reach the summit as we were being hammered with hail. As you can imagine, we didn’t stick around for long and proceeded to hike down the mountain. Going down was significantly more dangerous with the gale-force winds pushing us down some nasty slopes. I was “flying” at one point… I was thankful that I was being blown away from the edge not over it. There was no permanent damage, just a few bruises to add to my normal collection! Some others on the mountain were not so fortunate. We watched the rescue helicopter land on the mountain to lift two people who had suffered broken limbs from the conditions. The round trip took around 4½ hours in the end. After all was said and done, we treated ourselves to a dinner out and a little relaxation.