T
he alarm sounds at 4am and the remarkable idea you had the night before starts to seem like an insignificant and pointless chore. At this early hour, staying in bed rather than chancing a sunrise inversion at the top of Pen Yr Ole Wen feels like the better choice. Catching the sunrise from the top of a mountain, especially when gifted with an inversion, can easily be romanticised to be sitting fresh faced and bushy tailed as you watch the
golden hue rise from the far corners of the dark abyss. Whilst the view is all of this and more, the reality is often sweating profusely in a race against time to get to the summit to enjoy your well-earned flask coffee and tranquil sunrise only to find the view obscured by dense cloud coverage or, worse still, you find yourself in the cloud! Fortunately for us, on this particular morning our lucky stars had lined up and we were rewarded handsomely for our efforts.
good at forgetting the hard parts of a hike. After a short debate about who will get out the car to brave the cold first, we’re going for it. Bags are packed, boots are on, and I press record on my camera to start my vlog. Lauren leads the way up the intricate network of paths
on the lower flanks of the Southwest Ridge, we chose this route as it was the quickest way to the top albeit not the most straightforward route finding, it helped that I was familiar with the path after using it a handful of times guiding groups for work. The cloud thickens to leave only a glimmer of light from headtorches only a few steps away. It’s a peculiar feeling chasing an inversion, whilst you're
R Standing atop the Adam and Eve stones of Tryfan.
The “almost certain” forecast from the night before had
slipped overnight to “uncertain”; a sudden change like this doesn’t exactly leave you feeling energised as your driving along the dark and foggy Nant Ffrancon road. As we pull up to the Ogwen Cottage, Pen Yr Ole Wen began to loom above us, looking a lot bigger and a lot steeper than I had remembered - like most of us, I’m pretty
excited to be walking through the mist, at times you can’t see past your hand and you start to question if you will break through the cloud at all. Inversions are literally a stab in the dark, I had already tried twice to get a sunrise inversion that week and failed to get above the clouds on both occasions, this was indeed third time lucky. As we approached the 700m mark (altitude) the moon appeared above us and we let out a sigh of relief knowing that the beading sweat on our brows was finally worth it. A few minutes later, we were above the cloud, the
silhouette of the Glyderau and Snowdon mountains lit up by the moon left us speechless. Tryfan standing isolated looked nothing short of majestic. I could never put into words how truly astonishing this view was. Unfortunately,
"AT TIMES YOU CAN’T SEE PAST YOUR HAND AND YOU START TO QUESTION IF YOU WILL BREAK THROUGH THE CLOUD AT ALL."
22 | CLIMB. WALK. JOIN.
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