Belter of a sunrise to start the day off today.

I was working with a young but fit group of students, who opted for trying out a ‘bigger’ peak than one I’d normally go for with them. It was looking like Carnedd y Filiast was just staying clear of the clouds, and gave us a little bit of shelter from the winds, but even so it was Baltic start from the warmth of the mini bus!

With a windchill of nearly -10°C, and some strong gusts, I began to think that perhaps I might have over egged it a bit, but we took it in small sections and had plenty of breaks to smash up any ice we came across!

From 700m the ground was well frozen with needle ice pushing up the solid.

The summit rocks were frosty but passable.

We all ducked into the summit shelter for lunch as the wind roared overhead.

All was going well until halfway down the mountain, I noticed that one of the lads wasn’t wearing his rucksack?.. Strange I thought… Unfortunately, it turned out he’d taken it off near the top, then got distracted, and carried on down without it! Long story short – I bundled the lads into the emergency group shelter and had to jog back up to find it! Luckily I met some other walkers heading down with it just shy of the summit! Meanwhile, the group were having a fine time inside the shelter and wanted to stay in there longer!

Hard to convey the conditions in a photo, but it was pretty cold!