Next Event: Day Trip
WUMC Bangor Round/North Wales Trip
The last club trip of the year to North Wales passed successfully, and saw the club compete against other Welsh universities at the Bangor round of the WUMC series, whilst those not competing headed out to the mountains.
Friday saw us meeting on campus, with some nursing hang-overs from the Christmas Dinner the previous night. We set off after the usual delays, and were soon heading up through Mid Wales. After stopping for the usual chippy stop in amazing Rhayader, we arrived 5 hours later at the Snowdon Inn, which was surprisingly quiet compared to the other times we’ve been there. With an early start ahead of us, it wasn’t long before most people went to bed.
We woke to a dry, but cold morning, and after breakfast set off for the climbing wall in Llanfairpwllgwngyll. The 8 competitors were dropped off, and the other 5 of us set off for Ogwen Valley. Our aim for the day was to climb Tryfan via its North Ridge. We parked below the mountain, and soon set off. The scrambling starts almost immediately, and it wasn’t long before we were gaining height. After admiring all the popular landmarks such as the cannon, we reached the summit in good time. It was rather windy, so we didn’t linger long, we instead stopped on the descent for a break (and also making rude snow sculptures….). We soon dropped into Cwm Bochlwyd, when the rain, which until now had been mostly absent, started. We rushed down the quickest path back to the bus, and after drying off, set off to pick up the others – having a pint in Bangor on the way. When we got to the wall, we found everyone had had a good day, even if we’d not won!
On the way back, we stopped at Pete’s Eat’s in Llanberis for a well earned meal, and headed back to the pub, where Bangor uni had organised an evenings entertainment. This proved to be the usual rowdy event, with the highlights being us being given a mountain of leftovers from the hog-roast, and Jamie pulling a strange local, who soon started stripping off….
Sunday morning was more relaxed, and after feeding a cat pork and milk, we set off for the Beacon wall, where most of the club were going to spend a wet and windy day climbing inside. The less sensible of us then headed up to Pen y Pass, from where we aimed to scramble up Snowdon. After layering up with waterproofs, we set off up the Miner’s track, where we soon turned off the nice path, and started climbing up y Gribin, which proved to be wonderful, exposed scrambling. This led us onto the East Ridge of Snowdon, and after a long slog we were on the summit, which being December had plenty of snow on it - luckily we all had axes. Again, the summit was too windy to spend a long time at, so we sheltered against the café for a break and a play around in crampons. We soon set off down the PyG track back to Pen y Pass, and as we dropped off the summit, we found a nice snow slope to practice self arresting with axes. We played around for quite a while, and eventually made it make to the bus just as it got dark. We arrived back at the Beacon to find everyone warm and dry, and despite bleak first appearances of the wall, everyone seemed to have enjoyed themselves.
We set off for Swansea and eventually got back around midnight, after stopping for a decent meal in a pub Machynlleth.
Thankyou to everyone who came, especially Martin, Ed and Rachel for driving the bus. Congratulations to those who competed in the competition, overall positions for the teams were 5th and 6th, which considering climbers from other unis, is a good result. Also congratulations to Ed for climbing his first mountain!