Pen yr Ole Wen in the Wet and Cold

Friday 7 June 2019

Travelling day. Why does it seem that everyone is on the move on a Friday? Vince left home at 10 and arrived at mine at around 14:30 – 90 minutes more than it should take. We left for Wales in my car at about 15:40 and only got as far as the A420/A34 junction before we hit the first bottleneck. We seemed to crawl along in traffic all the way along the A34, M40, M42, M5 and M6 until we turned off onto the M54. Ok, probably an exaggeration but it was definitely one of our slowest journeys to North Wales. We even had to phone ahead to our billet, Elen’s Castle Hotel, to let them know we would be late arriving and make sure we would still be able to get a meal on arrival. Also a couple of delays caused by Jack’s bouts of kinetosis (best not to mention the details). Finally arrived at Elen’s Castle at 21:15. We dumped our gear into the bunkhouse and then went straight for a meal in their restaurant.

The plan for this weekend had been to do Rhinog Fawr and Fach on Saturday and the two summits of the Northern Rhinogs on Sunday. But…. the forecast for Saturday was heavy rain all day, so after dinner we discussed our options in the bar over a couple of pints of Felinfoel Double Dragon. We decided on a change of plan and do Nuttall Route 1.1 (Pen yr Ole Wen, Carnedd Dafydd, Foel Meirch, Yr Elen, Carnedd Llewellyn and Pen yr Helgi Du) instead.

Saturday 8 June 2019

As expected, when we rose at 7.00 it was already very wet. A quick breakfast of porridge pots, bananas and tea before setting off; already with our waterproofs on. We parked at the roadside parking about 400m east of Llyn Ogwen and, once booted and fully weatherproofed began our walk at 9:10, initially on the public footpath toward Tal y Llyn Ogwen. We soon turned off this to begin the ascent toward Clogwyn Mawr, but the problem was the path was on the east of the Afon Lloer which we would soon need to cross to continue upward on the west side. The stream looked impressive with the amount of water cascading down it, but unfortunately there was no safe place to cross. After  a good few minutes fruitlessly searching for a crossing point, we had to descend some way to a footbridge that allowed us to cross the main stream, but we still had to leap one of the minor streams before we gained the west bank. Vince put right a group of Silver D of E students who had missed their intended path before we finally crossed.

We made our way up to the east ridge of Pen yr Ole Wen and began a slow ascent. As well as the constant rain it was unseasonably cold and I was beginning to feel it. I think we stopped for a banana break somewhere on the ascent of the ridge, but cannot remember exactly where. After a bit of wet scrambling we eventually reached the summit. We did not stay there very long in the awful conditions – just long enough to take a few record shots. We pressed on to our next objective, Carnedd Dafydd. We had only gone a few hundred metres when I had to stop to add an extra insulating layer. I discovered my hands were so cold I could not operate zips or toggles and had to enlist Vince’s help to do this for me. I could not remember ever feeling so cold on the hill (even in Scotland in winter). We pressed on a little further, but I was glad that both Vince and Jack agreed that we should call it a day and make our way down.

And so we returned to the summit of PYOW, took a bearing, and began the slow descent on the south-west ridge. This was a very rocky descent and finding the exact path turned out to be rather problematical. We made slow progress, but at least I was beginning to feel warmer. After what seemed like an age, we arrived down at the A5 at Pont Pen-y-benglog and the final 2k of road walking back to the car. At least the rain was beginning to ease off now.

We sat in the car to eat our lunches! I think this is only the second time we have not completed the full planned walk, probably the first time because of the weather conditions. The only other time was Foel Goch in the Arenigs, when instead of doing Nuttall’s circular route as we had planned, when we got to the summit we decided to just retrace our route back to the start due to time pressure.

	Summit	Height (m)		Status
	Pen yr Ole Wen	978		Hewitt, Nuttall