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

Saturday 19 February 2011

Scrambling on Tryfan & Tryfan Fach

Yesterday (friday) I was out on the North Ridge of Tryfan scrambling in the cloud! The great thing about this route is you can pick your lines anywhere between scrambling grades 1-3 which I did. Over the years I must have been up here 25 plus times & never once done it by the same route. Always good fun. It was pretty claggy today & the cloud base was around the 500-600m mark. Sporadic snow cover from around 800m but not neve, just soft melting stuff. No ice anywhere to be seen. Only came across 2 other people on the whole mountain which is very rare for Tryfan.
On the way back to the car I stopped to solo a couple of routes on Tryfan Fach which is always fun in big muddy boots!

Winter proper is still unfortunately eluding us here in N.Wales.

Tuesday 8 February 2011

Stunning weather on the Carneddau

Today was a stunning day on the Carneddau. I got some fantastic photos and had a good few hours walking in the mountains & practising navigation.
Conditions were really beautiful. Ground is only frozen on the summits.
There are still no winter climbing routes anywhere near in condition.
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Pic 1: Stunning views looking SW from Pen Yr Ole Wen summit
Pic 2: Black Ladders not in condition