The purpose of this blog is to report on winter climbing conditions in Snowdonia, to keep you lot who like nothing better than climbing ice, snow, frozen turf etc in ridiculously low temps informed!! As well as it being a record of some of my own winter climbing adventures. Feel free to email me any of your own conditions reports & photos you have & I will post them here. The more info on winter conditions the better! email:
andymountains@googlemail.com

Sunday 27 December 2009

Cwm Cnefion reliable again





Andy McQue and I walked up to Idwal today to see how things were looking, and well it was not too good. Most the ice in Devil's Kitchen area looked to have gone. The only thing that still looked to be formed was South Gully, but we did not take a close look.
Instead we did East Wall Gully up the left hand side of Idwal Slabs. Pretty much stripped bare until the last 20m or so where there were some snow & ice patches.
However once we popped our heads out into Cwm Cneifion it was a different (and much whiter) story.
We headed up and did Tower Gully, in what at times was some very testing weather! Snow being blown up the gully as we were climbing. Plenty of snow & ice in there & well worth a visit. Not perfectly consolidated neve snow etc etc... but great fun, and the severe wind & hail made it quite interesting.
Very poor vis today, so no idea what anyone else was on in Cwm Cneifion.
LOTS of snow forecast for tuesday.
Pic 1: A miserable sight above Idwal.
Pic 2: East Wall Gully.
Pic 3: Andy encountering ice in Tower Gully.
Pic 4: Me at 'the Tower'.

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