Written by Imogen Young
We were very lucky to have family living near Scafell that were happy to take us in last night, saving us from another journey into the early hours of the morning. This meant our day started at 6am for a 4 hour drive down to our final peak – Snowdon. The traffic was very kind allowing for a quick souvenir stop in Betws – y – Coed.
Lynne dropped us off at Pen – y – Pass car park and after a quick toilet stop we headed up the Pyg Track. Surprisingly our legs loosened up quickly and we got into a steady pace clambering over the rocks and boulders that made up the path. The sun was out however a chilly wind blowing up from the valley kept us cool and luckily it was a day without rain. We soon reached the first ridge and the mountain came into sight looming high above us. The peak was in and out of cloud so we were hoping it would blow over by the time we reached the summit.
The next section of path was fairly flat following the contour of the mountain so we made good progress and the path to the top came into view.
It became steeper and rockier as we scrambled up to the zig zags to the top ridge.
By now a queue was beginning to form in busy and technical parts of the ascent.
The summit ridge was windy and unfortunately in thin cloud so the long queue to the trig point seemed too cold to wait in so we settled for a selfie just below the trig.
We had managed to reach the summit in 2 hours 24 minutes!!
We quickly headed back down the ridge and dropped onto the top part of the Pyg Track which was much harder coming down as it was so steep and quite slippery. After 20 minutes on the Pyg Track we began the scramble down rocks to the Miners Track just below – from previous experience we know this is a much kinder path to descend. After Jennie’s fall yesterday we were very cautious of slippery, wet rocks. When we reached the lake we stopped for a drink and snack to give us energy for the final push to the end of our epic challenge. The Miners Track snakes it’s way around the valley giving many false impressions of how close we were. We pushed hard to keep a fast pace and were soon greeted by the familiar car park gates where Lynne was ready to pick us up.
We have made so many good memories on our adventure and it is certainly something we will never forget. It was such a shame that we couldn’t finish as a team and we wish Jennie a speedy recovery. All that remained for us was to get some much needed fast food and head home after an amazing adventure.
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