I received a mail from one of my reader and she requested some info about Snowdonia and places we visited.

Well I have to say I did not become an expert of that area, however in our short visit we have seen and experienced some great life-changing things. Since I came to the UK (and visited peak-district and Scotland) I wanted to climb a mountain here. And Snowdonia turned out to be the best place for it. One of my good friend recommended a "walk", up to Snowdonia's beautiful rocky mountain: Tryfan.

With its elevation it is not the highest mountain, however as they say it is one of the best fun to climb/scramble. It is considered as Grade 1 mountain, so you can climb it without the need of being a professional climber, however map-compass-guide is recommended.

Well, those we did not have. I spend a couple days reading about the mountain, reading different routes, and decided to go for it and climb the mountain from the North Ridge. As we visited Snowdonia in the fall, I did expect some bad weather, however I did not consider that the weather can turn nasty at 910m. 

Arrived there in the morning at 10 am. left our car at the layby on the A5, and began our scramble up on the North Ridge. We got exhausted after like 10 minutes of scrambling up, however it was still the easiest bit. The terrain constantly changed and became harder to climb, also as we were reaching higher grounds, the weather became colder and fog began to come down. 

When our muscles got tired, we finally reached the hardest part of the mountain, so adrenalin kicked in and helped us through the hard stuff. Since we did not have a guide, or any other device, not even a frickin' whistle (huge irresponsibility I admit) we began to follow a group of 3, because they seemed quite experienced and well equipped. 

I don't want to bore you with the details, but this is the fact, this was the scariest scramble I ever did. The fog became thick, we did not see 10 feet ahead, all you could see were rocks disappearing in the fog.

As the mountain has 3 summits through the North-Ridge we never were sure when we reached the last one. On our way, we got hail, snow, ice in our face, wind, slippery rocks and thick fog. People were lined up and everyone was silently pushing themselves up on the rocks. No one talked or laughed, I believe everyone was a bit scared. We climbed up on a gully and after a couple hours of intense climbing we finally reached the summit. 

The weather turned real bad, so we had no chance to do the jump from Adam to Eve. (two rocks near each other, people celebrate the climb with jumping from one to another) We got hail in our face, but on some strange way we enjoyed it. When you looked around all you could see were people dressed up in fully waterproof gear, sitting around eating, drinking from thermoses, and chatting silently while an incredible amount of ice were pouring down from the sky. The temperature was around 0 degrees Celsius, because the hail/ice did not melt, the summit was covered with ice. 

Because of the fog we had no idea how to get down on the South Ridge, so I chose another group of 3-4, to follow all the way down the mountain. We kept changing our route, kept following different people, and I have to tell you, it was not easier descending than climbing up. Because of the hail before, all the rocks were extremely slippery, so all we could do was skidding down on them. We needed to be cautious, because no one wanted to have their leg broken and get carried down by the mountain rescuers. Through, fog, hale, wind, ice, water, we finally got down from the mountain at 4pm. Do the math. We began to climb at 10am, and got back at 4pm. 6 hours of hard climbing, with almost no rest at all. This was probably the most exhausting thing I have ever done in my life, but also the greatest experience ever!

We decided to go back another time. :)

The next day we took it easy, as nobody could move, we went for an easier walk around the Miner's track, you could also see some pictures below. (posted earlier)