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

Wednesday 21 December 2011

Y Gribin & Cwm Cneifion

Headed out early this morning down to Ogwen. When I pulled up in the car park at 6.30am it was 11 degrees which did not bode well. Really low cloud cover (from Ogwen cottage!) and drizzle. I headed up Y Gribin ridge with Holly the Collie, snow cover started from the 'football pitch' area but was wet & sporadic. I thought that higher up on the ridge the snow would be more consolidated but was wrong, snow was wet, turf was unfrozen & any ice whch had been forming was melting fast. Even on the Glyder Plateau the ground was saturated & very little snow.
Looks like winter has deserted us now here in N.Wales with no forecasts to suggest things will change anytime soon I'm afraid.

Pic 1: Clogwyn Du & Easy Gully area stripped bare
Pic 2: Tower Gully/slabs area same story
Pic 3: Holly the Collie at least had fun in the snow

1 comment:

  1. it's a sorry picture up there! I ran up Moel Siabod Sunday evening and was rewarded with nearly knee deep snow for the upper 200m. By Monday morning, heading up into Cwm Cneifion revealed a dripping melting pot - we ended up doing Cneifion Arete as a (wet) summer scramble :(

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