As the country slowly freezes, the mountains of the UK are floundering under a sea of unconsolidated powder snow. After a rather loose excursion up Tower Gully in Cwm Cneifion before christmas, James and I were back in the Glyderau on New Year’s Day. There had been more snow over Christmas, so we (and everyone else) were staying clear of gullies. This meant ridges, and we chose to have a look at Y Gribin (II). Some bright spark decided it would be a good idea to approach from the Bochlwyd side of the ridge, on the basis that it had been wind-scoured for the past few days and caught morning sun, and therefore may have melted a little and consolidated a bit more than other places. How wrong that bright spark was.

After wading through waist-deep powder we eventually made it up past the False Gribin and onto the ridge proper. The first bit of the route was nice and easy, but as the climbing got harder so it seemed to quickly become swamped under a sea of powder too. We followed the crest for a while, until I found myself stood at the top of a big slope of powder, poised to send it down onto some innocents on the path below. Not fancying incurring much collateral damage, we finally gave up and retreated back to the path. Turns out we weren’t that far from the top anyway, but the remaining few metres of the path still weren’t terribly solid. Once on the top, we plodded down Devil’s Kitchen and into sheer chaos in Cwm Idwal.

The snow was rubbish for climbing, but perfect for making snowballs, sledging and playing around, which is what most of the population of North Wales seemed to be having great fun doing. I even saw one child who’d managed to climb halfway up the first pitch of Ordinary Route (Diff) on the slabs and bum slide back down again, it was so blanketed with snow! There were climbers all over the ice routes, which looked a bit fatter than the previous week. Unfortunately while a lot of people are having great fun on hard mixed routes (Black Ladders) and mid-grade ice (Idwal), we’re somewhat limited by our lack of experience / ‘bumbly’ status and are desperately hoping for some freeze-thaw cycles to bring the snowy gullies into condition!

Anyway, whilst not a total success in that we didn’t stick to the desired route all the way up, and it possibly wasn’t the best route choice by me, it was a good day out and keeps us busy until the things we really want to do become climbable!