Last Tuesday, at approximately 1pm, I was 1085m above sea level, after walking up from 725m below along the windy and very windy Pyg track all the way up Snowdon. It took me, Jonathan, Chris, my mum and my sister about 2 and a half hours to get up and we were all very tired, but it felt great!
The way up was very hard and there were loads of steep bits to climb up. There was a real sense of competition between each family, with everyone walking fast and trying to take as few breaks as possible. When we did have a break, we would get up and get moving as soon as we saw someone approaching. I was probably the most competitive, always rushing ahead and having to wait for the others to catch up. The last bit was a bit of a scramble, but we finally made it to the top.
It was so different from what I expected, there was even a cafe and a gift shop! There were so many people there, the stump that marked the summit was covered in them. About three quarters of them hadn't even bothered to walk up but had just taken the train and felt they deserved to have their picture taken next to the summit after such a long journey. We couldn't actually take a picture cause there were so many stupid tourists in the way! There should be a barrier between the train and the platform so that only the people who had walked all the way could get to the top. Or at least two summits, one slightly lower than the other. It was very funny when we had just about got to the top and the train went slowly passed us. We waved happily at them and they just looked glumly back at us, too embarrassed to wave.
The way down was very nice, it was quite steep, but it was all open and you could see the mountains either side of you (when there wasn't any cloud in the way!). It was all very nice and then we realised that we had gone the wrong way. If we wanted to go the right way, we had to walk all the way back to the top of Snowdon and turn left. If we wanted to keep going the wrong way, we had a 5 mile walk along a road to get back to our tents. Luckily we caught a bus and all was well. Here is a map of what we did wrong. We were meant to follow the green path to where our car was waiting, but instead we followed the red one:
Oops!
Here's some pics of the walk from Picasa in a slideshow:
Enjoy your day!
Sam
PS This is quite a late blog cause it took a while getting the pictures sorted.
I am so totally jealous! Oh, and yeah, I agree with what you're saying about the whole tourist thing. It kind of belittles everything... xy
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