Karen and myself would like to apologise to all, for our failure to activate NW 32, Carnedd y Filiast and we hope that no-one wasted too much time in front of the radio awaiting our call …
The trip started out well, and we were making reasonable time across the moor…until the Vibram sole on Karens’ left Salomon boot delaminated itself from the carcass.
With her usual grit and determination, Karen decided to carry on which we did…When we got to the ford, we could not see the summit, as the cloud base had enveloped the top quarter of the hill but we pressed on regardless!.. On reaching the summit, we could not see the trig point at all and we stumbled around in the heavy mist for about 20 minutes and still didn’t find it.
The going was somewhat difficult up there, as it is covered with large clumps of tough old heather etc, with deep and hidden spongy ‘cavities’ around them…I decided that, without knowing where the Trig point was, activating the summit was not practical as we did not know if we were within the A/Z or not and I didn’t feel that further exploration was sensible, with the cloud base still dropping and visibility quickly decreasing.
Again, many apologies to all from myself and Karen…We’ll try harder next time folks!
Thanks Tony!..I think it was the right decision, although it was a hard call to make and we were both a little despondent on the walk back…But, at least we now know what’s what with that summit and we wil probably re-take that one, along with 039, Foel Goch next weekend!
Bad luck over that boot! It happened to me, once long ago on Moel Siabod before it was GW/NW-010, and I tied it on with a bootlace. Amazingly, the bootlace lasted until I got back to the road!
I also applaud your decision to abandon the activation, after all, for all you knew you might have been on a false summit! Much better to abandon than to have feelings of nagging doubt as you put your log into the database!
Cheers Brian…It is possible that we were in the A/Z but without knowing for certain I didn’t want to risk it and the doubt afterwards would trouble us about the legitimacy of the activation…Failure is not something that we are comfortable with but having to disqualify ourselves for that summit and thereby nulify the chaser points would trouble us far more.