Snowdonia Training Weekend – October 1999
I set out on this weekend with the aim of honing my skills in the art of navigation, although those who have been walking with me before might rephrase that as "starting from scratch".
We stayed at Ogwen Cottage Youth Hostel, which we reached at about 10:30 on the Friday night, thanks to the minimum of faffing before leaving. Following breakfast on Saturday, we split into two groups. I joined Blossom, Suzy, Dinny and Shirin in Dan's group. We headed for the Moel Siabod area, staying at a fairly low level. Dan assigned various tasks to each of us in turn, giving us destination on the map to reach, whilst considering time, ground conditions and the fitness of the group. He decided to have some fun by choosing a target involving cross-country navigation. Using the shape of the land, and new terminology such as spur and gulley, we succeeded in finding our way. Oh, and those brown squiggly lines on OS maps are contour lines. In true Welsh tradition it started to rain hard, dampening our spirits somewhat. We trudged on, and later engaged in a brief spell of "find the wall", the wall in question begin no more than a random pile of stones. The next problem involved walking around a field using a compass. It sounds simple I know, but try getting back to the precise point you started from. Dan was unimpressed, so we repeated the performance and managed to return within a metre of so of our origin. Either Suzy's paces are very small, or she cheated - I wonder which one...?
Lunch time on Moel Siabod.
Back at the hostel we were given the tasks of route planning and listing the most important things to consider before setting out. I was disappointed to learn that locating the "PH" symbol on the map is not among them. The famous slop, prepared by resident chefs Dan and Claudia went down extremely well. Most of us has seconds, though Suzy took this to an extreme by returning from the kitchen with a full plate about eight times. That evening we went to the Plas-y-Brenin mountaineering centre to listen to a lecture on trekking in South America, and to catch up with Kate (former vide-president), and Ben (former complainer), who had arrived independently. We then returned to the hostel, which surely deserves a place on the Explorers hostel blacklist if such a thing exists.
After around two hours sleep, it was time for breakfast at the unearthly hour of 7 'o clock. I joined Dan's group, consisting of Dinny, Jay and Nick, ready to do battle with the Glyders. Dan insisted we went cross country again, while we watched Ben and Kate striding up the path to Gribin. We opted for the scrambling option; This was fun, and lessons were learned concerning group management. A highlight of the trip was being knocked down like dominoes by the wind, causing us to make a swift descent to shelter below. Not wishing to be future subjects of the TV series "999", we paused for lunch and hoped the wind would subside. We then headed for Tryfan, joined by Ben and Kate (they just would not go away). After a few navigational errors, we found our way along the ridge, and dropped down to the lake, and the road back to the hostel.
Sitting at the base of Tryfan.
It had been a tiring day, but we were all content that out navigation and leadership skills had improved dramatically since Friday. The journey home was enlivened by some spooky storied supplied by Rich. As I was asleep, I am unable to document them here (sorry Rich). In conclusion, the weekend had been a steep learning curve, albeit a wet one, and I look forward to putting my new found skills into practice on an unsuspecting group of Explorers in the near future.
This Web page is based on a Hikup article by Simon Field.
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