After a five hour drive we got our first view of Snowdon on Saturday afternoon bathed in sunshine - fantastic it was all looking good for our climb on Sunday.
Jumping out of bed on Sunday morning, ready to go , I opened the curtains to be faced with a view of....nothing.....a total white out. I couldn't even see the garden let alone the mountain - oh no!
My biggest concern about climbing Snowdon was losing the path and getting lost, therefore, attempting the climb without being able to see where we were going was, for me, a worrying prospect.
Nevertheless, we drove to Llanberis for a recce. Llanberis is the starting point for the most popular footpath to the summit and also the mountain railway station. The mist/fog/cloud had not lifted so we decided it would be sensible to catch the train to the summit and then perhaps walk back down. The train journey took one hour and the windows were a wall of white all the way to the top.
It was raining and foggy at the summit, visibility was about 20 feet, even so there were a surprising number of people up there (mostly looking exhausted and soggy) so we headed back down on foot.
The Llanberis footpath turned out to be a lot more defined than I was expecting, with the benefit of hindsight I now realise that it is easy to follow, even in poor visibility. The main challenge was that the path was steep in places and made up of small loose pieces of slate and rock boulders which, as it was raining, were slippery requiring concentration with every step - in places the footpath was more like a stream.
The walk/climb down took us three hours. We emerged out of the cloud about two thirds of the way down. Having reached the bottom I was really disappointed that we hadn't also climbed to the top.
However, the good news is - new boots (sore toes) but no blisters!
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