16.08.09

Snowed on

Posted in People, Travel at 8:34 pm by alby

As P and C get ever closer to being parents it was noted that P would have fewer time to go off and do his own thing in the near future.  Thus was born the plan of me and him charging up and down a stonking great hill.

We decided on Snowdon as I’ve never been up it before.  No really.

We headed off later than planned on Saturday but ended up at the correct camp site around 4pm.  The plan was smaller hill on Saturday and then Snowdon on Sunday.

The camp was under the minor hillock known as Tryfan.  The weather wasn’t wonderful but that was expected. So off we went.

After a good while of off-route scrambling we figured that we’d not have enough time to reach the summit and get down again before dark so we reluctantly headed down before we’d planned.  We did manage to get to a high ridge between two peaks though.  No idea if it’s called anything, prolly.

So down we went.  Quite a steep route down but for the most part pretty easy.

But then.  Oh then.

My legs were a little worn out and were trembling a touch with the effort when I missed a step and my body went further forward than my legs.  There was a large stone to my side that I tried to grab and vaguely managed but I couldn’t stop myself sliding further forward and down.  At this point I was still confident that I was going to be fine.  My head seemed to be coping happily.  Unfortunately for it (and the rest of me) it was mistaken.

My chin smacked into the stone with a mild thwack.  It hurt a bit but I was more worried that I had hurt my jaw.  I’ve had problems with it before and don’t want the bother of dealing with it again.

(Incidentally, while I’m typing this it’s making my chin and jaw ache a tad.)

P saw me on my face and shot back up from where he was to make sure I was ok.  I felt not too bad but was bleeding a bit from my chin.

P didn’t look too impressed when I showed him the cut.

But no matter there was no other option but to carry on walking down.  The next hour was tedious descent whilst noticing that the bleeding hadn’t stopped.  By the bottom of the descent my shirt was mildly gory.  P looked at it again and thought that it now looked worse than it did when I first cut it.

So off to A&E to get it looked at.  I did wonder whether this was an over-reaction but I preferred to get it at least checked.

Once there the triage nurse thought it might have been ok to just tape together but was concerned enough to ask me to wait to see a doctor just in case.  I think our A&E plan was justified right there.

After some waiting I was called in to see the doc and he said just one word (other than pleasantries); “glue”.

So my chin wound was superglued together!

Well not actual superglue but something very like.  The stuff they used is not water-proof.  Meaning I can’t wash, shave or shower (that bit) for a couple of days.

Main concern now was “what about Snowdon?”  We’d come all this way and I didn’t want to let the side down.  We’d already wasted our one evening there waiting in a bleedin’ hospital.

We’ll see in the morning I guess.

Now we needed food.  We’d had to come to Bangor to get to an A&E dept so we found ourselves a sit-in Chinese place called The Garden.  Very nice it was.  I’d changed from gory shirt to “near-rags” shirt but they had a big mirror in their waiting area and when I saw my chin I wanted to walk straight back out again.

It looked like it was still bleeding badly.  One of the waitresses gave me a paper napkin using which I discovered that the big blob of blood on the chin was set solid, rather than still oozing.

I still wasn’t best pleased sitting in a public eatery looking mildly gored up.  Never mind they found us a quiet place.  Food turned out to be rather good too.

Back to the camp-site via some extremely strange directions from P’s satnav.  We finally figured it out when I used mine instead.

Windy night in my new one man tent.  It worked fine.  I may be a touch too tall for it however.

And then to Snowdon.  Started at Pen-y-Pas and headed up the pig track (PYG track).  Harder work than I’d thought it would be and took ages.  Oh and the weather was quite close so once a certain height up there the visibility dropped right off.  We walk these things to get the views yes?

I rather liked the gallows humour of the other walkers and it was a proper sense of achievement getting to the top.  Woot.

Coming down P had picked the Miner’s track.  Some fools seemed to have chosen to try and ascend this way.  It’s far steeper than the PYG and that’s after a long slow incline to the start of the scramble.  I did feel quite sorry for those at the bottom of the scramble who asked how far they had to go.

“Well about 300-400m straight up and then you’re about half way”. Seemed a rude answer to give those who were already struggling.

I should note that P had originally planned to go via Crib Goch.  But the weather conditions really did suggest that this would be a more bad idea than it already was.  The combination of very strong (to 50mph) winds and poor visibility meant that only the loons would bother this route on this day.  But there still were some folk trying it.  Idiots.

As we headed back along the easy end of the Miner’s track we saw some very unfit looking folk heading up the hill.  I’d say a good few of them should have turned straight round and gone home.  The depression they were setting themselves up for didn’t seem worth it to me.  These were people red-faced and wheezing up a mild incline with 1km to go before the really harsh bit.

At the other end of the fitness scale there were a few lunatic fell runners.  One of whom passed us 3 times.  Once on the way up and again coming down (as we were still going up).  Later, on our way down, he passed us again on his way up again!  Fool.

There was a couple who made it to the top with a baby being carried in a rucksack thing.  Fools.

And back to the car.

Pics of the weekend (including mild gore) here.  No summit shots though as it didn’t seem worth getting the camera out in howling winds and no visibility.

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