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I've just got back from a long weekend camping in Snowdonia with the family and got to the top of Snowdon on Sunday and Monday. Both trips were great but couldn't have been much more different.
Sunday's trip was on foot with Mrs FBJ and our 5 year old daughter. We set off from Llanberis expecting to get to the limit of where it was fun for the wee one and head back down, hitting the summit would probably be just too much for her. It being August bank holiday weekend, we were expecting the path to be busy but the volume of people was incredible - the junction with the Ranger path almost doubled that volume and from the junction where the Crib Goch, Pig and Miners tracks join, it was a queue to the summit with a wait to get to the summit proper. Little legs did incredibly well and we were both really proud of her, loads of vocal support and encouragement from other walkers was a huge help too. The summit photo of her on my shoulders, amid a huge crowd of happy faces will get printed and framed for the wall soon. My wife queued for 15 minutes to use the toilets in the café (girls and dignity) while my daughter and I marvelled at the two large groups from 2 normally less than neighbourly middle eastern countries, on separate trips, carrying their respective flags and all hugging each other in congratulations and sharing food together. I also had a moment of stunned dis-belief as I watched 2 chaps, probably in their early twenties, throwing rocks into the thick mist from the top, just beyond the café door. My suggestion that doing this was incredibly stupid as they had no idea who was below them was met with the explanation that it was OK as the path wasn't up that side and it was so they could film each other doing so and watch them back in slow motion. One then picked up a football sized rock and his mate pointed the camera at him again, I was amazed that I more or less kept my temper and at their subsequent red-faced apology. The thanks for stepping in from a picnicking party nearby was enough to lower my blood pressure, thankfully.
The trip down was all good with regular feeding or jelly babies to keep a tiring 5 year old going and a chocolate cookie the size of her head at the café half way down fuelled her to the final gate where she finally gave in and finished the return to the car on my shoulders. Her statement that "today was 100% ace" was the icing on the cake for a great day out, possibly even better than the huge fish supper we munched our way through back at the campsite.
Monday morning meant it was time to sneak out early, alone and on the bike. A few easy road miles to wake my legs up before a quick (for me anyway) dash to the top, I think I rode everything I could have expected to get up and where I couldn't ride, I fast walked so as not to eat into too much of the day. I passed one walker going each way as I ascended. At the top, I ditched the bike at the bottom of the steps, jogged up, touched the view point and returned to the bike to put on my arm and leg pads. A quick re-fill of my bottle from the spare in my bag and off into the clouds. I dropped my Reverb for the steeper bits at the top and didn't touch it again until nearly half way down and my brakes went from good to less-so and never got time to cool down as I was pleased to find I'd beaten the crowds, not seeing another soul until about 100 yards before the final gate and back onto tarmac. A great ride, despite the aching arms from the descent and to top it all off, I got back to the campsite to find a boiling kettle and bacon ready to go in the pan.
That was a really nice weekend.
sounds great and well done to the little one for doing so well on the walk:D
"today was 100% ace"
🙂
Sounds amazing - What time did you leave to get up early enough for a descent without the crowds?
Want to get up Snowdon this year with a friend for a ride - did you go up the Llanberis path?
Well done to the 5 year old, I was taken up Snowdon as a youngster and loved it!!
Good to get kids out at an early age ,sounds like an ace weekend
I left the tent about 6.45 and we were about 4 miles from Llanberis, up and down the Llanberis path and was back just after 9.
I remember camping in Glen Nevis on a biking trip, but having a day off on midsummer solstice to walk up Ben Nevis. As we cooked breakfast in the early morning (the old sun-hits-tent-turns-to-oven effect) we looked up at the mountain to see a lone MTB descending from the summit.
So someone far more imaginative than us had camped on the summit on the shortest night, and woken at dawn to have the whole mountain to him (or her) self for an epic dawn descent.
Still jealous, and this was probably 15 years ago....
Did you just bomb it back down the LLanberis path?
bet that was fun, hehe.
Yup, I know it's not the best route but I was short on time and figured it would at least be a clear ish run down. It didn't disappoint me at all, despite having done the loop around the Ranger path and back to Llanberis before.
what sort of top speed did you get? or rather, what top speed did you allow yourself?
No idea as my computer died on the roof rack in the pouring rain on Friday night. I think it was probably something like 15 minutes from top to bottom, that's a guess really but somewhere in that ball park.