Moel Hebog, Moel yr Ogof and Moel Lefn

I drove up to the hut on Saturday night with Andy, not really sure about what to do. Andy hadn’t done Hebog before, so we decided to do that, apparently it had beaten him a couple of times, and it had turned him back for one reason or another. Sounds a bit like my experience with A’ Chailleach in Scotland a couple of weeks back!

I’m not going to rabbit on about the route too much, as it was an exact duplicate of that I pursued in the summer on the club’s Plas Gwynant weekend.

With reports of nothing but sludge on the tops we committed the cardinal sin of leaving axes and crampons in the car, there were times later on where we certainly could have done with the reassurance of an axe in hand!

The weather started off ok, but the cloud closed in as we were ascending through the crags on Hebog, it was chasing us as we were creeping up icy steps near the summit. Some guy flew past us wearing little more than a pair of trainers and a buffalo top, track suit bottoms, and no sack…..rather him than me! As we departed from the summit of Hebog we left the cloud, and the weather was fine for the rest of the day.

There was still a little cloud about as we passed over Moel yr Ogof and Moel Lefn, but nothing to write home about, and the sky pretty much cleared as we descended Moel Lefn. The path down from Moel Lefn was steeper than I recalled, and very slippy in powder snow conditions. I started to slide a couple of times, but fortunately managed to keep control – but I’m not too sure exactly how.

As we arrived down at the forest, we picked a route on the map, following without trouble down on to the old railway that is being restored. It was at this point where the sky completely cleared, this being the first time that I have seen the top of Snowdon out of the cloud. It is also worth mentioning that much of Beddgelert had been felled since my last visit, and the route finding outwards was far easier than it had been then.