11:30am. Wet rocks, slippery footholds, streams cascading down the mountain. With my backpack on, I felt as though I had a lower centre of gravity, but I was certainly compromising by staying as close to the ground as possible. The ‘ground’ of course, was vertical.
While I’d dawdled a bit on the flat bit, the scramble-up-the-steep-bit was much more energising. Every move is part of a problem-solving exercise, where a hand or a foot in the right place makes all the difference for the next. I was extremely grateful that the new boots had so much grip - not a single slip happened on those shiny boulders.
The one thing I was deliberately not doing was looking behind me. I caught a glimpse of the height at one point while scrabbling on all fours. The view was upside down between my feet and my shiny waterproof trousers, but unmistakably the silver lake and the misty morning, far below. I focused on the climb, rather than the fall.
A consequence of that was that I wasn’t really conscious of how far behind my colleagues were. The steps up were getting painful now, and I knew I had to keep going to keep warm. That also meant that it would have been tough to wait for them all.
I did stop though, near the top of that scramble. There was a natural ledge that a few climbers ahead were sitting on, and I decided to join them, now quite unbothered at the thought of the cold and the damp seeping through my waterproofs. Though I should have been, I suppose.
Tim and Robert and Kelly were first up, after a few minutes.
I imagined that we were all thinking how weary each other looked. I peeled off my gloves and chomped through a banana.
“Only half a k to go,” said an older gentleman next to me. You might not believe this but over a thousand people a day visit Snowdon, and although I’d lost my troop, I was never on my own. In fact, in lots of ways, it’s quite encouraging to see people of all shapes, ages and sizes trekking up over the difficult stones.
I wanted to ask him whether he meant half a kilometre to the top, or just to the top of the Miners’ Track. We could certainly see files of hikers along a high craggy route, joining up to the misty path ahead.
“Cold, Matt?” asked Robert.
“Yeah, how long you been here?” added Kelly.
I suddenly felt the cold. I slipped my hands back into my wet gloves and balled my fists a few times.
“Yes,” I said, “Ten minutes or so. Starting to feel it.”
“You could always do press-ups,” suggested Robert, half-seriously. I declined, then asked them if it was okay to keep moving.
12:40. I was certain that to the left of me was a serious drop. I could see the stones sliding off into the fog. On a better day, I bet the view would be magnificent. If I really was just half a kilometre from the top then I must have been around a thousand metres above sea-level. I wondered whether seeing that view would have made the ascent easier or much more difficult.
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