Cloggy on a Bad Day by Will Stanton
We left the lay by in the Llanberris Pass at 11 o clock having had a good breakfast at the Bryn Tyrch Hotel in Capel Curig, North Wales and then wasted an hour or so in ye olde Joe Browns overpriced climbing gear shop (other overpriced climbing shops are available), waiting for the weather to clear.
The plan had been something like this: OK If there is never going to be Ice in Snowdonia for winter scrambling with crampons and stuff again (evidence of global warming)- We'll go in the summer and darned well scramble in the blazing sun. So standing with our noses pressed up against the steamed up windows of Jo Brown's, we watched forlornly as any hope of healthy out door activities in a warm and friendly environment, was washed away by the downpour being whipped into a frenzy by the wind and smashed into the plate glass.
Undeterred, we set off up the serpentine road to Pen Y Pass and descended the other side to a layby just past the Climbing club hut in Llanberiss here we tooled up for climbing and headed for Cwm Glas which would signal the start of this days adventure, Clogwyn Y Person Arête. Well, actually the adventure started before we even got into the Cwm. Two sets of conflicting guide books saw to that. As usual I trusted in my Steve Ashton guide and as usual it was wrong, OK not exactly wrong but vague where clarity was needed. This resulted in my interpreting left as right, how does that happen? To make matters worse, It was about now that we realised the only map we had was worse than useless due to excessive wear on the folds and the details one needs are always neatly arranged on the folds.
Still, having finally found the Cwm and the arête we reckoned that the ridge would guide us through from now on. We sat in the lee of a boulder at the foot of the arête and listened to the wind hammer wildly around us whilst eating mangled provisions reclaimed from the deepest and darkest parts of our rucksacks, somewhere between the climbing harness and the spare socks.
As we ate we watched a party head off up the arête with apparent difficulty. This combined with the wind driven drizzle and the mist creeping ever lower on the arête made Evans decide that discretion was the better part of valor and that we wouldn't get him up there if there were a pub with naked bar maids, let alone for a scare and a soaking. I was with John but I had the rope in my sack and therefore was volunteered as indispensable.
And so we three, Sharland (too daft to k0now what to be scared of), Winter (Normally quite sensible, what was he thinking) and I (the worlds only mountaineer with no head for heights), set off up Old Cloggy. At first we had a pleasant surprise. The scrambling was uncomplicated, we used a rope for a few short pitches, due to the slipperiness of the rocks in the drizzle. However the wind, which in the Cwm had been howling, was almost calm on the ridge. I knew we were going to get it at some stage but for ages we seemed to be in a pocket of calm. We could see the mist flying past to either side of the ridge, we could see the surface of Llyn Glas being whipped into a froth. Wind devils violated it's surface and whisked up wakes and waves shooting off in wild directions. But where we stood on the ridge, all was peaceful. We ascended into the gently swirling mist crowning the arête ahead.
Passing into the mist the ridge eased forming a broad horizontal crest. This lead to a cairn marking the junction with the famous Crib Goch ridge, the most dramatic section of the Snowdon Horseshoe route. A left turn here put us on to the pinnacles section of Crib Goch, one of the finest ridge traverses in the UK, though in the mist you could have been any where rocky. It was about half way across this ridge that the wind finally caught up with us. The Crib Goch Pinnacles are only a grade 1 scramble but today they were out to give us a run for our money. The wind tried all it's wicked wiles to unseat us from the crest. It would go nice and calm until you stood up and then it would ram you with a bluster from below or it would howl over the ridge forcing you to lean precariously into it to retain your balance, and then drop dead to set your feet scuffling around in a crazy jive trying to compensate. In the pinnacles there was always some thing to grab hold of during these moments but on the last section of ridge this was not the case.
Ahead of us stretching out into the mist was a dead straight path of polished rock, gleaming with moisture and forming the crest of an almost perfect wedge, falling away at an impossible angle to each side. Here the wind miraculously dropped. I could not help being aware of the battering that had just been dished out so I was compelled to traverse this section stooped so low that my hands dangled each side in readiness to drop on my face at the slightest suggestion of even a breeze.
After this we came to the summit of Crib Goch and began descending the steep slope to Bwilch Moch. Unfortunately we thought that we were now home and dry and launched ourselves into the mist in what we thought was the general direction of home. This turned out to be incorrect and far too late, when we realised that all was not well, we got out the compasses to ascertain what had gone wrong. In my sack I found two compasses and discovered to my dismay that they both pointed diametrically opposite directions. Christ, which one is right? Luckily Winter had brought a compass too so we followed the direction upon which two compasses agreed. As I said it was by now too late to get back on the right path and the mist seemed to have descended to the bottom of the pass by now, so we made the best of a bad job and followed slopes down to the road, helping out some other lost souls who had been following our voices in the mist. They had thought that we would know where we were going!
WS.
