I got laughed at the other day for predicting there’d be a flat bit, then a steep bit.
In the end though, that’s exactly how the Miners’ Track worked out.
There are six proper ways up and down Snowdon, some tricky, some easy. We had chosen one called the Miners’ Track (flat bit then steep bit) up the mountain. I mean surely the miners would have found a nice climbable route for themselves and their stuff, right?
It occurred to me too though, that all routes up a mountain have to converge anyway at some point. They’re probably all going to be difficult.
11am. The rain fell steadily as we rounded the lakes at the bottom of Snowdon. We were surrounded by rock face, looming up into the clouds. Tiny streams and waterfalls lined the slate hills, each one a silver ribbon tumbling into the wind-rippled water.
We’d been walking for about an hour. The miners’ track had taken us around a few of those lakes. With the weak light and the misty clouds, the lakes took on an otherworldly silvery shimmer. Bleak but beautiful. In my layers and my hooded rainmac, I felt a bit like an astronaut, carefully striding on the surface of the moon.
“So we have to go up that?” asked Rachel, pointing a gloved hand towards the mountain. Way up, zig-zagging high on the rocks was a small group of trekkers with poles. They reminded me of those goats who file up the side of cliffs, impossibly precarious, dangerously high. They slowly disappeared into the cloud.
“I guess it’s one step at a time,” said someone else.
I took a deep breath, a swig of electrolyte-powered water, and headed for the rocks at the base of Wales’s highest mountain.
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