Mountain Photography: Wales Monday July 31, 2006
My introduction to Wales was my first experience of mountainous countryside. It was a school trip when I was 15 or 16, staying at an outdoors centre owned and still owned by Kent County Council. It’s on the perimeter of Llyn Padarn just outside Llanberis, in rough-stuff Snowdonia. I went back to Llanberis a few years ago, before driving down to Carmarthen to meet with a buddy. On that occasion I walked up Snowdonia and Tryfan, but found the latter unattractive on the Llyn Ogwen scramble and the former – surprise surprise – was drenched with rainy cloud, allowing visibility of just a hundred feet. I didn’t like it; add that to my experience of Llanberis, which is slate mining grim overlaid with a bit of tourism, and it wasn’t a good experiece. I am however equidistant from both Wales and the Lake District, and it makes sense to explore the former – so I thought – because surely it must have some great attractions. It’s a big mountain area, in character very different from the Lakes, more like a smaller and less formidable version of Scotland.
So I’m just back from Wales; apart from anything else, I needed some photographs for an MA project about Narrative and Landscape. I stayed five days in Beddgelert, which is in the general area of Snowdon and a neighbouring valley to Llanberis – but very different. Beddgelert is in the Nant Gwynant valley, and leads to the equally attractive Aberglaslyn Pass on the other side. I didn’t do a great deal of walking: Llyn Idwal, Devils Kitchen and the Gylders on day one; Cnicht on day 2, a car tour and some strolling on day 3, an aborted attempt at Snowdon on day 4, and another short walk in the Aberglaslyn Valley on the last day. The highlight would have been Snowdon which, regardless of the nasty railway and summit café, is still an impressive trek, especially if you venture along Crib Goch. The first time I did the famous ridge, I found it frighteningly uncomfortable. I was convinced I’d found the technical limit to my walking, beyond which I was neither skilled nor inclined. On this occasion, much of my motivation was to get some interesting photos from its precipitous and surly heights. Ansel Adams, eat your heart out: I can also make sacrifices in the name of photographic enterprise.
In fact, it was surprisingly and enjoyably easy. I wonder if I’d neglected to eat properly on my first encounter because I sometimes do, and the ensuing semi-hypoclacaemia is not much fun. I get weak, and feel generally unstable. On two occasions I’ve bashed my car from simple and avoidable errors of spatial awareness and both times, I was feeling weak and unfed. I’ve also packed a lot of walking into the few years since my first Crib Goch encounter and confidence permeates your stride, instilled from experience. Which is not to dismiss Crib Goch: up to ten people need rescuing every year, two or three needing a stretcher and perhaps one who no longer has a pulse.
Anyway, this time I enjoyed romping along the very top of the ridge where before I was horrified seeing people do that, instead of clinging to slightly lower-down routes. Once you’re comfortable with the exposure, which is quite dramatic, it’s good fun. But, reader, it wasn’t to be: approaching about halfway the weather turned very bad, as wind and rain poured across from Snowdon making the polished rock slippery and making careful crouched-over walking advisable at certain points, in case the wind increased just slightly and blew you off the top. Fortunately it didn’t get that severe but it was just on the edge of it; it’s not unknown for wind to send people plummeting down from knife-edge ridges. I came back, and managed to get lost. What is ordinarily a straightforward navigation route becomes a bewildering array of boulders in bad visibility: I descended the flank of Crib Goch, down to the Pyg Track.
Wales isn’t as beautiful as the Lakes, and my heart is more in Cumbria than in the Celtic hills. However the Lakes are touristy, and attract larger numbers of people. Wales has an ‘alternative’ feel to it; there used to be a tipi valley where hippy people went to live, there’s quite a famous centre for alternative technology, and no doubt its Celtic associations attract other kinds of hippies.
Wales is rougher and wilder, and photographs are not so easy to find. I really need to explore it some more and relax my continual Lake District visits, until those lovely hills have recovered some of their bloom. It’s gone; there’s no exploration for me in the Lakes, because I’ve already done it all. Wales however, is still relatively unknown territory for me; I need to consult some books, learn a few names, and learn to identify the peaks from the high level panoramas which are largely a mystery for me except for unmissable Snowdon.
And I want to do Crib Goch again, in good conditions. Here’s what it’s like – the exposure is as dramatic as it appears, although the technical difficulty isn’t:
