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

Monday, 20 December 2010

Cwm Idwal today (Mon 20th Dec)

This morning Davey C & I had a very early start (5am) from up here in Deeside & were at Ogwen by 6.30. It was good to find the A5 nice & clear of snow, although parking at Ogwen takes a bit of effort. A trail through the snow had already been stomped down yesterday (albeit a bit meandering!) up to Idwal. We headed to The Ramp & The Screen area, which were out 2 planned routes of the morning. There is a very good build up of ice on both of these routes, as well as South Gully, Idwal Stream, Devil's Pasture & Coldhouse Crack. Another route I would like to climb is The Curtain, and although the ice is building, it didn't look substancial enough to climb.
There is no consolidation of snow at all, and trail breaking off the beaten track is very very hard going.
Davey had to be back in Ellesmere Port by lunchtime, so we were only able to climb The Ramp, but we had a very worthwhile morning. Just goes to show, quite often a 'suck it & see' attitude pays dividends in Wales in the winter.





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