Mountain Lifestyle: Alpine Ogwen

It's not often in North Wales that you need to make an alpine start and plan to climb in the shade in order to escape the toasting heat, but today was one of those days! I'll admit, I was pretty slow getting going when the alarm went off, but in order to make the best of the day (and find somewhere to park), an early start was required.

All was calm as we walked into Cwm Idwal, despite a gales of hair dryer warm air howling down the Nant Ffrancon.

We planned to link up different rock climbs up towards the summit of the Glyders. We started on 'Charity' on Idwal Slabs, in the cool of the morning.

Our friend Matt had also had the same idea of how to avoid the sun and climbed a route nearby. As we climbed 'Lazarus' on the upper walls, he took this photo of us. (zoom in!).

We had a sandwich and a rest before Clare set up the 'easier' of the holy tree wall routes, which is rather under-graded and requires a cool head and some bold moves for the grade.

At the top of the continuation walls we stopped again to admire the views and wonder where to go next! While we sat there, a Hercules and a Red Arrow flew down the valley below us!

We opted to go higher onto Glyder Fawr. There are several long routes here, so we opted for one which I don't think I'd done before. Meanwhile, Matt climbed on the next ridge over on 'Central Arete'

We climbed East Arete, which despite the modest grade turned out to be rather harrowing and at time almost unjustifiable. Perhaps we were not quite starting in the right place, but we seemed to be according to the topo. The climbing was on good rough rock, but there was almost no way to protect the route.

After quite a few wrong starts and dead ends, we made upward but tentative progress up some serious terrain. The final section gave more relaxation as we reached the sunshine and better protection.