The path out and up from Capel Y Ffin wasn't as bad as I remembered it - it was steep, muddy and slippery but I must be more hill fit than I was a few years ago. We paused to catch our breathes as the path levelled out - I remembered sitting at this point with my daughter a few years back and her telling me it was a classic example of a 'u shaped valley' (she'd been reading her Eye Spy book not long before)
Although I had my microspikes in my bag I hadn't anticipated there would be snow on the tops, but having seen the tips of it during the drive in it came as no surprise there was soon snow underfoot. Only one set of walkers appeared to have been up there since the snow had fallen looking at the footprints. Last time I'd been up in these hills I'd seen a number of rambling groups - one particular walk stood out where no room had been made in a shelter cairn for us. Being on the Offa's Dyke path it does tend to get allot of footfall along the ridge too. It wasn't long before we passed a group coming up onto the ridge. Not feeling social I increased the pace to put some distance between us. I do like to be social on the hills sometimes, but sometimes find it a bit much being stuck behind a large group if I'm after peace and quiet. It's been particularly busy in work lately and it's nice to just get away from the noise for a short while.
Views over to Pen Y Gadair Fawr
Black Mountain South Top
I love how the broad ridge allows for big dramatic skies to take centre stage
Snow clouds coming in..
Somewhere around this spot in the unmarked top of Black Mountain
I was busy testing my new boots (Alt-bergs) out in the virgin snow
It's always nice to have a good zoomed in view of Pen Y Fan
Our summit from the previous weekend's walk
Background - Waun Fach, foreground - our ridge down
Approaching Hay Bluff
For once the top wasn't too boggy
Our path down to the Gospel Pass was quite slippery - Mike managed to slip over right in front of some other walkers, but righted himself quickly - they did have a chuckle at his expense though. The Gospell pass has a high level parking area and the walk up to Hay Bluff from there probably takes about 40 mins to an hour depending on how fast you go. We passed allot of people without rucksacks and proper walking kit, it did make me wonder what they would do if they had a slip or a fall. At least we had the reassurance of provisions, layers, survival tent and bag in our packs.
Heading down to the Gospel Pass - Twmpa (Lord Hereford's knob in the background)
Once onto the slopes of Twmpa the snow which had been threatening all day finally kicked in- we hoped the people on their way up Hay Bluff managed to get back in once piece.
The top of Twmpa
The dog was not mine but made us jump when it appeared with it's other doggy buddies ahead of it's owners
We took a bearing and headed off in the direction of our next top - Rhos Dirion
The amount of snow which fell in 30 minutes was so significant it covered all tracks on the ground and became quite deep. Finally the sun started to come out as we neared our top.
Rhos Dirion
We headed to the edge for better views
Grwyne Fawr Reservoir. We had been planning on staying overnight in the bothy there the night before our walk, but the forecast looked quite bad and we didn't fancy camping if the bothy was full. One day though..
We were so busy looking at the views we'd not realised we'd taken the wrong path of Rhos Dirion and had broken the cardinal sin of not taking a bearing on leaving the summit - we realised we were on the path heading towards the Waun Fach ridge, so we then had a good 15 minutes of tussock bashing to return to our correct path - lesson well and truly learnt.
The ridge on to our final top of Chwarel y Fan was horrendous - wet snow on top of boggy peat meant that every step felt like 3 as you kept slipping backwards. I nearly suggested abandoning the walk and heading back down, but a stop and a bit of high energy rocky road steered me on. We both enjoyed the top once we'd reached it too.
We didn't stop for long as more big snow clouds were coming back in. Rather than taking the sensible option and following the path back the way we had come to eventually reach a path down we took a short cut through heather which I had done before. I did that a bearing this time, but the snow was starting to come down quite heavily and we missed the path I wanted to descend on. The terrain which we'd reached the top of was too steep to head down on, so we contoured round and reached the other path which we'd taken the short cut to avoid!
We were however glad that we were on that one as it took us virtually back to Capel Y Ffin which was reassuring given the rate the snow was coming down.
I was glad we'd chosen a fairly low level mountain walk that day given the conditions we experienced. It was reassuring that given the weather and despite the odd navigation error we managed to right ourselves and kept ourselves on track. We heard later that evening there had been a rescue around the Pen Y Fan area and the teams had to go out in the conditions we'd had late into the night. Huge respect in the teams in terms of what they do as just getting yourself across the terrain in those conditions felt tough, but having to carry someone over it must be hellish. I do like the big sky black mountains, but I think the Rhos Dirion ridge is best kept for dry conditions!
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