Snowdon

why do people climb mountains?
For the thrill? the adventure may be? Or just to prove their superiority (or of their kind). For many people I know, the whole thing is just silly. Why go out to such dangerous places? Leave the safety of your home and home town. and for what? all that walking and climbing and tiring yourself....

Well, I do not think so....

So this time, the target was The Snowdon! In case you don't want to google it, Snowdon is the highest peak in the whole Great Britain! With an altitude of 1,085 meters (3,560 feet) it is known for challenging cliffs and terrain for rock climbers and scramblers. Specially the Crib Goch ridge trail up to Snowdon summit is considered a real challenge. Not that I want to boast, but I have climbed higher, I have climbed tougher (arguably), but THIS was one of a kind experience and I did it all so well! (oohhkkkk. may be I want to boast just a lil bit! :D)

So, few mails were sent to gather all who were interested. Finally, it was Ashish, Tanmay, Krishna, Santosh and me. We made provisions for stay (or as they say in this country, got our "gig" sorted)   at the youth hostel of Pen-Y-Pass. (How to pronounce this name, "pen waay pass" or "penny pass", I never found out. As I came to know later on,they have a different language down in Wales. Its called the Welsh language! Me thinks Welsh names are hard to pronounce and weirdly spelt. Like the names from lord of the rings!!)
And as for getting there, a five seater a car was hired and the driver, your truly, was reading and digesting the highway code and every symbol within it!
Plan was simple enough. We had to start at 3.30 AM on Saturday 8th August, reach Snowdonia National Park by 7.00 AM. find parking space in the car park of the national park to park the car(lots of parks in there). Start and Finish the trek on Saturday, stay at the youth hostel at Pen-Y-Pass and spend the Sunday at some sunny welsh beach! And that is exactly what we did. End of story....

or is it? :P

As all good things do, we started late. At 5.00 AM we were still roaming around derby, looking for a open petrol bunk and fiddling with the sat nav. There was this other confusion among us No one was sure who the driver was! This lead to everyone trying to drive and all front and back seats where full of drivers!! The rookie first timer that I was, I fell in to the vicious cycle of nag, aggravation, mistake, self-doubt, nag.... But, as soon as we hit the empty M6, the sat nav said go dead straight for several miles, I was in control! I was the pilot, the captain of that ship and I let 'em know that!  But I must acknowledge the help and support I got from my crew. Without their sensors scanning and reporting all the activity in the surrounding quadrant of space, I would have had a hard(er) time steering the enterprise (we hired the car from enterprise car rental!). We took less time than the “google maps” estimates to get there.(I guess google obeys speed limits.. :P) 8.00 AM we crossed Llanberis. After a quick road side snack out of our back packs, we were parked at the pen-y-pass youth hostel. We started our climb towards the summit of Snowdon at 8.30 AM.

The map showed a scramble up the Crib Goch and then the ridge walk. Crib Goch, the peak next to Snowdon, is no place for inexperienced. After a gentle start of the ascent, the path goes almost straight up the face of the hill. This is where you need the scrambling skills. Once on top, the path goes along a very narrow ridge. Chiseled sharp by the wind and the ice the ridge gives a feeling of walking along the edge of a jagged knife! All the rocks being razor sharp and path no wider than 3 feet wide at places, one must be careful about choosing each step, each hand hold. With sharp drop of 800 (...ish) meters on either side, some people preferred crawling till they reached wider ground! To add to all this, icy wind was blowing over the ridge. Even in the summer, you would need multiple layers of clothing to keep warm. And if you were glasses, please install a set of wipers on them......

For a place of such difficulty, the ridge was awfully crowded. Mountaineering enthusiasts of all ages, sexes, shapes, sizes and weight classes can be found here. With no space to pass one another, at times there was a  queue along the ridge waiting for the first crawler to move along.  We took about three and a half hours to finish the complete stretch of ridges. Once we reached the slopes of the Snowdon, the terrain was quite easy. Thirsty and hungry, we kept climbing for 30 more minutes and we reached the summit of Snowdon!

And boy was it crowded! We climbed 1,085 meters only to find a train which brings few dozens of people up the mountain every 30 minutes! All the tourists the train brought crammed up the summit more than old madras road at 8.45 AM on a Monday! No wonder Snowdon is called the busiest mountain in Britain! But we didn't care! We came there to climb a mountain and climb we did! Trains and gift-shops are for the tourists!! We were sitting triamphant at the top, admiring the beautiful welsh landscape...

Trying hard to filter out all the tourist activity around me, I try to be a part of the landscape. Be a part of the nature again. Like the grazing sheep on the slope, sea gulls hovering on my head or the boulder I sat on.
Sitting in the clouds, I look at the rugged mountains, the curvy valleys. The water rushing downhill and the grass swaying with the wind. Silence fell upon me. I didn't want to describe it to myself. I didn't want to move. I didn't want to go home. I just wanted to be there and be there alone.....

Why do we climb mountains?

We climb them to be belittled. Not to conquer them, but to be conquered.. To realize that we are just a part in this contraption of universe. We may have managed to gather more than what is need for survival. We may be smart enough to have invented the wheel, built roads and waged wars. But we are no more than the pieces of dominoes tumbling one after the one before...