Ascent of Glasgwm

Had a fantastic day today. I almost didn’t go, having my bloody throat infection again. I picked Paul up in West Bromwich at about 05:50 this morning and set off up the M6 and the M54. I hadn’t really decided how much I was going to climb today, having felt pretty rough since Friday. Only when we pulled up at Dobbies did we decide that we would go to the Arans after all, but do a much shorther walk.

We set off up on to Glasgwm with the mountain well and truly in the cloud, contrary to the forecast. We worked our way up the valley, which we had to ourselves the whole day, except momentarily when another group began to catch us. The weather was fairly decent all day, but we didn’t have the views that we had hoped for. We found our way on to the main Aran ridge somewhat quicker than we expected, and of course it was not long before we were on the summit of Glasgwm at 780m. The lake just beyond the summit, Llyn y Fign is most impressive, but I had just put my gloves on, and really couldn’t be arsed to take a picture, the sweeping cloud would have spoiled any shot anyway.

We found the lake quite disorienting, and neither of us were expecting it to be where it was. It looked immense, and momentarilly there appeared to be no route around it. From here we trundled quite happily along on the ridge until we came to the forest. We were quite confused by the forest to start with, as we could not see the fire breech that we would need to use for the descent later. The summit cairn of Glasgwm, 780m. Paul topping out on Pen y Brynfforchog, 685m.

Eventually we established our location, found the breech, and continued to the second Nuttall, Pen y Brynfforchog (685m). We were confused again by the location of the summit, that was just a small pile of slates, and then we lost the path very briefly on our return to the breech.

The forest was very boggy and wet, and barely descended, in fact we seemed to gain more height than we lost. Eventually we came out of the forest after a break, and descended quite steeply back to the car down what appeared to be an old slate mine track.

I really enjoyed myself, even though I didn’t feel great today. The photographs will show that I have a new camera, it works, it has digital zoom, the flash works…..cheers Argos, not bad for £8 🙂