Climbing Tryfan - we knocked the old girl off!

So today was designated as ‘Tryfan’ day. It had the best forecast – clear and sunny, with some wind. I’d had real reservations about doing Tryfan – it is a pretty full on climb and I hadn’t really enjoyed that aspect of Crib Goch, but when push came to shove, I couldn’t stay at home and watch Craig, Julia and Finbarr head off, so of course I went…

The climb on the whole was actually not too difficult, but it started immediately, and we were then climbing for two hours to get to the top… There were a couple of hairy bits where I felt like I was stuck, but aside from that it was manageable. I’m typing this on Tuesday morning, and I’ve got some great bruises and very sore muscles today! The path was pretty indistinct at times which I didn’t like very much, and as we got close to the top we took a wrong turn so we missed one of the iconic views of the mountain… And then we couldn’t find the top – Finbarr who had mountain goated off up a different route was up there before us, so we called out to him and from that worked out how to get up to the top! We admired Adam and Eve (but chose not to climb up on to them…), had lunch and then headed down.

The second half of the walk involved climbing up to Glyder Fach via Bristly Ridge, and I was really uncomfortable with that. The wind was really quite strong, and I was a bit wary about tackling it so I decided to walk back down via Llyn Bochlwyd and Cwm Idwal. Julia also came with me as she has been having trouble with her Archilles heel so she didn’t want to push her luck given that it had got her up and down the mountain. So we wandered off and left the boys to their own adventure. And watched all the fighter jets swooping up and down the valley as we descended – very cool! Down at Cwm Idwal we paddled in the water (boy was it cold!!), sat in the sun and waited for Craig and Finbarr to reappear via the Devil’s Kitchen. Which did take quite a while as they got a bit lost up there – we were just wondering at what point we would call out mountain rescue when they appeared!

Then it was back to the house for a well deserved beer, and a whisky before bed – which wasn’t late as we were all absolutely knackered!!