Greetings to all my fellow Sotarists .
Ever been blinded by the pure adrenalin of " Summit Bagging " and almost paid the price ?
Well , join the club , or rather , consider my recent experience on Snowdon and inwardly digest … it may help you survive one 'orrible day up some artic , heathen and thoroughly inhospitable SOTA summit !
This is what happened to Nick GW4OOE/P and myself MW6PYG/P ] :
On Thursday 7th March , having already bagged and qualified 4 easy SOTA summits GW/NW -051 : 044 :054 : 041 ] on the previous day we set our sites on bagging the Biggy GW/NW-001 .
Day 2 of our 3-day expedition to Snowdonia and the N wales mountains found us arriving at Pen y Pass Car Park just before 0900hrs . Wales offers the intrepid Sotarist a spectacular mix of bitterly spine-chilling wind , driving rain and fog . And so it was in that car park . Barely a sole sane] to be seen and visibility down to say 200 metres .
Our target was totally ’ wipe -out ’ thick fog / cloud obliterating all except the WC sign and the £10 CP charge for the dubious privelege .
We booted up , donned our wet-weather gear and with heads bowed to the wind we set off up the PYG track for NW-001 , complete with GPS route , laminated OS mapping , whistles , compasses , etc , etc .
Starting at circa 1000+ ft ASL we made steady progress on the ascent with visibility no better than 20 -40 metres . At around 2400 ft ASL conditions deteriorated rapidly as we slowly came into the snow line !
Didn’t seem too bad and the rain was tolerable but in our faces and the fog was getting thicker .
BIG MISTAKE !!!
We had invested so much time , energy , desire , challenge in bagging Snowdon , 10 SOTA points and 3 Bonus pointys to boot , that we just ploughed on up .
Tramp up Snowdon with our woad on ,
Never mind if we’re rained and snow’d on …
Well that was the song I recall singing as I climbed Snowdon the last time , 38 years and I did it again … as you do .
The next 1200+ ft of ascent to the summit were horrendous . Driving rain blasted onto old , compacted snow in near 0 Celcius temperatures results in dangerous ice sheets . Together with near near wipe-out visibilty the going got progressively worse the higher we went . By the time we reached the summit at c. 1210 hrs the wind speed had risen to 50-60 mph .
Hell on Welsh earth conditions… couldn’t even stand up .
No place to hide or shelter to activate for SOTA … welcome to purgatory !
We’d made it … just . So now to do the Activation . Somehow we were able to function long enough to get the radio contacts … by the skin of our teeth only . It was so hellish we were unable to remove gloves , handle GPS buttons , feed , drink or even answer mother nature . All we could think about was getting off that unholy mountain .
We had intended to return via The Miners Track but decide to return by the Pyg track .
We were very lucky to descent in one piece . Nick took over a dozen falls and I took two . The ice sheets were lethal and it took all our reserves to traverse them on all fours and /or on backsides . To attempt standing would have courted disaster .
AA 2hr+ ascent / 2hr descent took over 6 hours . We arived back at Pen yu Pass exhausted .
I felt chipper… we’d done it !!
Well not too chipper for long … got back only to learn that the Mountain Warden had been warning folk of the bad conditions on NW-001 and advising that it should only be attempted with Crampons and Ice-axes .
We had neither .
We had no idea , when we started , of what was to come .
Moral to the story ? … On big mountains , even in UK , always , always get the info the the summit you are about to tackle … bugger the National weather forecast … complete waste of time for this sort of winter SOTAring .
BIG MISTAKE !!!
Happy winter bonus bagging to you all .
Next few weeks Nick , Phil G4OBK ] and I are SOTA bagging in Lakeland… baby summits for the spring campaign !
