#23.A tale of 2 Foel Goch's.5-4-12.

A heavy fall of snow on tuesday night and wednesday morning saw me heading up to Cwm Idwal on the thursday,my day off.The forecast was promising,a cold frosty wednesday night heralding a cloudless sunny day on the thursday.I turned off the A5 into the Ogwen Cottage car park to snaffle the last free parking space at 9 a.m. Late wednesday afternoon the snow had obviously started to thaw and the vehicle's had left the snow rutted on the road,and with the overnight frost these rut's had frozen solid and i had to don my crampon's immediately.Taking the path behind the warden's hut i made good progress up the steep,heavily frosty path whilst everybody else,who didn't have crampon's,were sliding all over the place.I stopped to take a photo of Pen yr Ole Wen by the ornate gate.

The river crossing.

The snow was very deep as i neared Llyn Idwal.Below,looking across to Y Garn.

And across to Tryfan.

Crossing the outflow of the lake my intention was to walk across the Mushroom Garden and climb up Foel Goch and swing round to Y Garn but as i rounded the lake the virgin snow was getting very deep,up to my knee's in the hidden drift's,and at least 6 inches everywhere else and my progress was slow.I stopped at the start of the route to Foel Goch to take a few photo's and my camera wouldn't let me take more than 5 photo's for some reason.On closer inspection i had forgotten to put my sim card back in after taking it out to put in my smaller camera for my last walk in Abergavenny and i could only take 5 photo's on the internal memory,dam.I started to gain height but was not enjoying it in the deep snow so decided to abort this walk and drive to Llangwm to walk Foel Goch Arenigs instead.Retracing my steps to the car park i was dismayed to see everybody entering the Cwm in boot's only,slipping and sliding along the frozen path.I drove the short distance to Llangwm and took my usual path up Foel Goch,again in virgin snow but a lot less deeper.The view's were great but i couldn't take many photo's so i deleted 1 photo which i took earlier to enabled me to take 1 at the summit as a jet passed by.

I retraced my footstep's in the snow back to Llangwm thoroughly depressed that i was unable to take any more photo's on a superb day for photography.The distance i walked today was 6 mile with 1,600 feet of ascent.

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