Between the Sunset and the Sea: A View of 16 British Mountains

Slowing the car, I rounded the corner onto the Pass and entered the cloud, brightening to a dappled gold as I climbed. A building sharpened to the right as the Pass levelled, a few vehicles and a hut to the left. This was it: Pen-y-Pass, the place from which to wave a handkerchief in the direction of most who head for Snowdon. For those three boys in 1960, this was their last glimpse of civilisation.

The car park was practically empty when I pulled in, turned off my engine and sat, listening to the gentle whumps of the wind against the car and the ticks of its cooling engine. Cloud was clawing the Pass frantically, one moment allowing glimpses of lofty context down its rain-glistened length, the next snatching it away. I left the car and laced up my boots, wondering what I should leave behind.

I imagined the worst happening, and somebody coming across the car days from now. They’d find discarded Twix wrappers on the back seat, filthy loafers in the passenger footwell, a warm jacket in the boot, batteries – trivial comforts awaiting someone never coming back, and now the object of post-mortem scrutiny. Could that spare jacket have prevented the hypothermia that killed him? Could that Twix have saved his life? Spare batteries – surely they could have done something?

Ridiculous, yes. But this particular hill was giving me dreadful feelings. Part of me thought it couldn’t possibly be that bad. I’d seen the shrugs and heard the ‘No big deal’ bravado from people who had done Crib Goch, but I also had a suspicion that, no matter how convincing the patter, most of them had felt a little shake on the ridge at some point. Now, with the act of leaving the car having been laboured over and over in my head, I was analysing every act for that critical choice: the moment when I’d make a decision from which I couldn’t come back.

Locking the car and taking a last look – wondering, ever so briefly, if the next person to acknowledge it would be from a search and rescue team – I set off onto the path known as the Pyg Track, which leaves the corner of the car park at a forgivingly gentle incline. Constructed from huge boulders, it has the effect of appearing to have been made for a giant, ascending grandly but gently to a narrow pass called the Bwlch y Moch. Continue over the pass and you enter the basin of the smashed cauldron of peaks comprising what is known as the Snowdon horseshoe,* (#ulink_fdbecf70-cbc6-5f8f-831e-96be836e2493) invisible from this angle. Or, on arrival at the pass, you bear right and take the much steeper route onto the cauldron’s broken rim, and eventually onto Crib Goch. Here, the scenery inhales grandly. Muscular hills, glistening water, and everywhere the dark, lichened Snowdonian rock, cracked and fractured in fragile-looking blades, like ancient, natural porcelain.

The air was warm, becoming slightly chilly only when enlivened by the wind. It was the sort of temperature that suggested a thunderstorm, but the atmosphere was thin and the cloud – whilst prolific – looked weightless, certainly for the time being. I passed two walkers on their way down, a couple who looked knackered enough to have been to the summit. I lifted my head and smiled with the kind of eye-roll, aren’t-we-mad, this-weather-eh? kind of look walkers often give each other, hoping that they might engage for a moment. I wanted to ask whether or not they knew of anybody else still on the mountain, but they didn’t look like they wanted to chat – they were on their last stretch, and obviously weren’t in the mood. All I got was a murmur of acknowledgement and the sound of their stiff breathing as they passed. Alone, I continued, the path steepening until after about half an hour I reached the pass, out of breath. Ahead the Pyg Track descended into a steep, broad depression before arcing right over a stile and barrelling into a huge basin beneath a ring of mountains that peered down upon it like a circle of faces. From here the distant summit of Snowdon nudged out from behind creased cliffs to my right. It looked far above, and far away.

Part of the reason so many people get to the summit of Snowdon is because there’s a train running up it, a café on the top and paths from every direction that resemble small roads for most of their length. Unsurprisingly, these do little for the mountain’s credibility as an objective for adventurers. After hours of walking, arriving at the top to stand in the same place as a festival of day-trippers clad in the meagre clothing of sea level who haven’t shuffled more than 100 metres – not to mention a natty building and a puffer train – must be a disquieting experience, and one I was curious to have the following day after my night camping alone on the uncivilised mountainside. The railway is an enormously popular draw, and doubtless a wonderful day out for people who can’t, or won’t, walk up Snowdon. But the walking routes see their fair share of bizarre traffic, too – cursed with the status of ‘highest’, the mountain attracts all sorts of feats that lay claim to an ascent with a particular, quirky caveat. Over the years a number of extraordinary sights have lumbered out of the mist on Snowdon’s slopes – from groups clad in pyjamas, dressed as gorillas or, on one memorable occasion, driving a car.* (#ulink_c2393348-8fd8-586a-81d3-541848e29ef0)

That this perception has caused Wales’ highest hill to be viewed as something of a sacrificial lamb to tourism is a shame, because as a mountain Snowdon is absolutely bloody stupendous.

The four peaks that form the massif aren’t arranged in a neat, linear manner like a child’s drawing; from above, the range looks like a slender starfish with its limbs mid-flail. Those limbs are sharp ridges that themselves rise to summits – including Crib Goch, and its more genteel mirror across the cwm, Y Lliwedd – and the gaps between them are chasms, floored with lakes and walled with bitten cliffs. Snowdon itself, seen from within the embrace of its eastern arms, is a black, fantastically sheer pyramid that, when not wearing its hat of cloud, rises to a pleasingly sharp point. It’s a drastic spectacle, and entirely unexpected by those imagining something blousy and accommodating. Unsurprisingly, this dichotomy between the mountain’s public persona as something of a tame kick-about and its very real qualities as a ‘proper’ mountain has caused big problems. The briefest scan over incident records unquestionably reveals that Snowdon’s popularity has prompted a serious lack of respect.

In 2008 two walkers came across some rubbish poking out of the snow heaped in the doorway of the summit café at around 7.45 a.m. Closer inspection revealed it wasn’t rubbish, it was a man – an unconscious 40-year-old who had climbed the mountain in trainers and a shirt, with not much else besides. Pinned to the mountain by bad weather, he had been forced to spend the night on the summit at −5°C and in 60 mph winds – which in combination reduced the effective temperature to a brass-monkey-killing −18°C. The walkers briskly placed him in all of their spare clothes and a survival bag, then scrambled the Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team. The man was taken down the mountain by the train, then to hospital by helicopter, where he was found to be suffering with hypothermia and severe frostbite to his feet. Without doubt the swift action of his rescuers saved his life. It was October.* (#ulink_f55bec47-cc6b-51c8-930f-94d9d8c3b1b4)

The Principality’s highest peak certainly hasn’t always been viewed as such a soft touch. Before the railway made its debut in 1896, Snowdon was considered a rather scary mountain. In Wild Wales, George Borrow’s dandyish 1862 meditation on the country, he quotes an old Welsh proverb: ‘“It’s easy to say yonder is Snowdon; but not so easy to ascend it.” Therefore I’d advise you to brace up your nerves and sinews for the attempt.’

And if Snowdon’s conditions are difficult to predict year-round, in winter they become hell for the unprepared, occasionally and unpredictably reaching near-Himalayan severity between November and February. Yet for some, even this has its perks. In the winter of 1952 the strange spectacle of a party of tall, rangy climbers could frequently be observed setting off up the slopes of Snowdon and the nearby Glyders whenever a poor forecast was issued, adorned with severe-looking equipment and long lengths of rope. Months later, in May 1953, members of the same team would make the historic first ascent of Mount Everest. For these men – which included John Hunt, Edmund Hillary and George Band – Snowdon galvanised preparations for the world’s highest peak, worthily testing their storm-gear and ice-climbing skills during some of the mountain’s shriller moments. It was a good choice: in winter snow and wind, Snowdon’s angles and ridges weren’t so far removed from the slopes of Everest as you might expect in terms of physicality, although obviously lacking the freezing, asphyxiating altitude. So attached were the team to the region, and so instrumental were the small but fierce peaks of Snowdonia in cementing the convivial bond of teamwork gained through shared hardship, that their annual reunion was held at the team’s old haunt, the Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel – less than a mile from where I now stood on the Bwlch y Moch. By 2003, however, the group’s numbers had dwindled to such a point that there was nobody in robust enough health to attend.

But even amidst such freezing peril, people think of the café and the train, and set off under-prepared up Snowdon’s slopes right into the bones of winter. Expecting good cheer, a cup of tea and an easy way off at the top, the unwary expend all their energy on the ascent and fail to realise that the summit is only half the effort. For your mind, the top is the finish line – the apex towards which all your concentration is directed. But for your body, it’s merely the halfway point. The physical and emotional crash of summiting, coupled with the underestimation of what a descent demands as your wits slowly unravel, are the reason why – on all mountains, everywhere, and by a considerable margin – most accidents occur on descent.

The light was softening, and cloud was quietly filling the valleys around me by the time I reached the path split beyond Bwlch y Moch. Onward: the Pyg Track, marked by a smart stile emblazoned with the path’s name in English and Welsh on sympathetic blue plastic. Right: a rough, steep path that ascended towards a tall, knobbly bulk. Immediately my pace dropped as the ground tilted and I felt the first pulls of grassy steepness beneath my boots. Within minutes, my choice of route had begun to assert its personality, the path zigzagging up the prow of increasingly defined mountainside. The next stile bore the words ‘Crib Goch’. This sign was signal red.

Around twenty minutes later, the ground started to steepen again. Then came the first naked rock on the ridge. It was aggressive-looking – many small flakes, angled skyward, like the spines of a balled hedgehog. I took hold of it. It was abrasive and eel-slick. Where the rock had weathered and crumbled to grout the spines it was a weak pink, a clue to the source of the translation of Crib Goch: literally ‘red ridge’. The path – such as it was – slinked vaguely amongst the outcrops, their ledges and flakes offering grab handles for balance where the path was too steep. Modest drops began to open to the left and right, until – about ten minutes from the stile – I could go no further.

In front of me was a large rock buttress, 40 or 50 metres wide. To carry straight on looked woundingly steep, but there were signs of a path on both sides of the obstacle – a thin, pink ribbon of scree draped over the rock. I took the one on the right, which vanished after a few metres at a series of mean-looking slabs. Traversing back beneath the buttress onto the left path, it began to wind beneath large, increasingly precarious overhangs that swiftly became awkward – like trying to limbo-dance under an eave. A potential way through lay up a narrow gully, but as I took hold of the rock and pulled, it became clear this was a move I wasn’t going to be able to reverse should it turn out to be a dead end. My right leg, jammed into a crack for purchase, began to shake.

This was ridiculous. Barely onto the ridge, I was already in trouble. Maybe it was my nerves making me indecisive. Maybe I’d taken a wrong turn and was on a path to nowhere. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this at all.

Mal had told me to take the ridge on the nose at the first rock step; I hoped this wasn’t what he was talking about. I pulled out my phone and called up the map, zooming right in and peering at the little blue arrow that represented me, frantically changing direction, mirroring my movements. According to this the path climbed Crib Goch just to the right of the ridge’s crest – a few metres from where I was now standing. I’d tried that, and it hadn’t felt right. Clicking the map off, I looked around my little ledge. On a ridge like this, it was pointless trying to follow the map with microscopic faith. I needed to feel my way up.

Gingerly, I began to descend the way I’d come. Reaching a broad, grassy bower below the buttress, I took a step back and studied the rock face. Head on, it certainly appeared possible. Big holds, large cracks to wedge parts of my body into – there were plenty of things to grab onto and hang off, but I still didn’t like it. From the looks of things, that was pretty much how this ridge was going to go: physically doable, but requiring a certain mental commitment. I leaned against the cold, briny-smelling rock. Standing there, running through the consequences of a mishandled traverse in my head, thinking of home and headlines, family messily sobbing unanswerable ‘why’ questions … this wasn’t doing anything. What the hell was stopping me here: the intimidation of the route itself, or my own horror-story-driven fear?

Using a flake of rock, I pulled myself off my feet as if peeping over a wall. The rock ahead ascended steeply, but it was broken, full of holds. I could climb that. Could probably climb down it, too. All it took was a decision.

A breath, then I pulled myself onto the step. A surge of adrenaline hit my legs as I lumbered up the first six feet of the rock. Don’t fall. Stay confident. This was it: I was on Crib Goch. Up or bust.

It felt good to have made a decision. Right or wrong, it didn’t matter now. As I climbed, my hands and feet finding holds easily, a tentative confidence grew – a kind of pragmatic resignation to the simple job in hand, which now simply had to be done. I could sense a drop opening to the right; I ignored it, keeping my movements as smooth as possible. I kept waiting to get stopped for long enough for my senses to realise the trouble I was getting myself into, but it never came. It wasn’t easy – I wouldn’t tackle it in high heels, that’s for damn sure – but after the initial rock step my uncertainty began to subside. For the time being I could breathe.

Ahead was a long and tapering ramp of stubby rock. It was broad in comparison with the claustrophobic cracks of just a few moments earlier, high enough to be exhilarating, yet secure-feeling. The surroundings were beginning to take on the jaunty perspective of great height, but I was still very much on the mountain’s flanks.

It didn’t last. A finger of rock tilting out over a drop marked the beginning of the stretch known as the Pinnacles, collectively comprising the knife-edged part of the ridge that Crib Goch was famous for. This rocky frill was the second of Mal’s ‘exciting’ bits. Again, two choices: the technically easier climb over the top, no doubt accompanied by the sort of airy, hit-the-deck-and-hold-on panic of great height on both sides; or an awkward, slip-friendly traverse beneath it to the left over one long drop to the right. I could see that the extent of the exposure was going to be hidden until I’d made my choice, so any ideas about just ‘having a look’ before committing to a move wouldn’t work.

Another moment of pause. The light was fading rapidly, and here I was at another uncertain commitment. Scraping a solid foothold from the loose scree beneath my feet, I took a breath to steady my knees, then – taking option one – hauled myself untidily onto the top. And there it was: the crest of Crib Goch, flat and straight, an upturned comb of rock spines as wide as a park bench. At its centre, the ridge was cut by a monstrous vein of white quartz, from a distance resembling a tangled parachute draped over the bristles – minus a dangling, panicking sky diver. Beyond, a thickening and jumbling of the rock suggested the end of the Pinnacles and a descent into the Bwlch Coch, the grassy notch at which I’d be over the worst of the bad ground, and in search of my camp for the night. All I had to do was get there. It looked a long way off.

The first pinnacle was tall and comfortingly huggable. Inching round to the left of it, I stepped out onto the crest in a low stoop, arms spread in a wide triangle in front of me, as if trying to ward off jumping terriers. A draught of air came from below as voids opened to both sides and I inched beyond grab-distance of the pinnacle. A few steps along the crest and I’d reach a small cluster of pointy rocks I could crouch against. All it took was four or five steps, and the means to link them together. One step, two, don’t look down, three, four … there. I spotted a gearstick-sized needle of rock; I lunged and grabbed it. It moved. I froze.

Heights, as far as your body is concerned, are the enemy. Look over a drop and you trigger a sequence of chemical events between your brain and your limbs – a kind of biological Mexican wave – that begins with a massive dump of epinephrine (otherwise known as adrenaline) from your adrenal glands. This hormone quickens your pulse rate, increases respiration, re-routes energy from your digestive system to more pressing physical applications, and releases nutrients and sugar flow to the limbs for a bit of short-term muscular zing. Hang out over a huge drop and you might describe such feelings as a hollow belly, a fluttery heart and a feeling of jittery, almost narcotic energy in your extremities that you could mistake for the irrational urge to ‘jump over the edge’. You don’t want to jump over the edge, of course. What you’re experiencing is a primal biological reaction from your body that you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be. A reaction that says, hey – if you feel like escaping whatever peril into which you’ve gone and landed yourself, here’s an evolution-crafted helping hand designed to channel all your available energy into doing just that.

This response is commonly referred to as ‘fight-or-flight’, though a more contemporary – and apt – term is ‘fight-or-flight-or-freeze’. It’s probably what has led to all those cases of people becoming cragfast on Crib Goch: a realisation of sudden, frightening vulnerability followed by a mutinous physiological rush, which, in delicate situations demanding calm and considered movements, might actually add to your problems. Not moving is therefore a fairly logical, if temporary, tactic – especially when you’re in an environment where gravity is against you and simply ‘letting go’ will be the end of you.

My knees were shaking. I was hoping I’d be bolder than this and not succumb to fear this early, but I’d seen the drop – and now couldn’t ignore it. The moving shard of rock had something rather more solid adjacent to it; I now clung to this and considered my next move. Ahead, the ridge was taking on an eerie quality in the thickening dusk. The light had softened, and the landscape was beginning to lose its contrasts. Fighting to keep confidence – and therefore decisiveness – under my control, I stepped up onto the crest again, and focused on my feet. Just like walking along a pavement. A very tall pavement.

The crest itself is fairly linear, maybe a foot wide, made of crenellated, fractured rock that’s broken up into halved-brick-sized blocks – small enough to step over, but the perfect size to trip the boots of the cocky or complacent. It’s given a certain potency by the ever-present drop to the right. The bedding planes of the rock are tilted in such a way that the north face is cut at a severe angle, meaning that the ground is shallower to the left – a long, loose slope at an angle of about 70 degrees. If you took a slip this way you still wouldn’t stop, but psychologically the drop was easier to deal with, and as I continued to inch along the chewed crest I could see the polished rock where thousands of feet had found passage a few feet down on this slope using the very apex as a handrail. This wasn’t hard to understand, because a fall to the right would be comprehensively fatal – hundreds of feet of air, terminating far below with a deep ramp of pink scree. The sense of dread isn’t relentless, however, as several grassy platforms and accommodatingly flat slabs of rock punctuate the ridge’s narrow first stretch – good spots to stop, breathe, have a chocolate bar and a little cry if you want, before reviewing your progress and looking further along the ridge to what’s coming.

A level block the size of a car bonnet appears a few feet beyond the big quartz vein – up close, it no longer resembles a stranded parachute but a rock sprayed with whitewash – and I chose this as a place to take a moment’s rest. From here, the architecture of the ridge is awesome, and your position – dare I say – incredibly exhilarating. Snowdon itself squares up to you now; a massive pyramid, slightly offset, its face acres of grey, deep-wrinkled rock punching skyward from its glacial valley, where the black waters of Glaslyn stare blankly upwards like a dead eye. It’s beautiful, and brutally so.

Beyond this point Crib Goch begins to undulate like a sine wave, rearing up into impressive rock turrets then dropping down again into slacks of narrow crest. It also begins to slink, snake-like, from side to side, creating tall, semicircular buttresses that bulge from the cliff and accentuate the long drops. From this promontory I caught a glimpse of the way ahead. It was a sight to raise blisters.

The ridge rose into two blade-like towers of shocked-looking rock, one after the other. I followed the line of travel with my eyes over the first, and felt sick; its crest tilted over the biggest chasm on the ridge, an overhang. It looked horrible – the prospect of climbing it like shimmying up an angled flagpole on the roof of a skyscraper.

Reaching the first of these towers, the rock underfoot became grander – shed-sized pieces of cracked rock replacing the fidgety, crenellated crest. Looking for polished rock that would suggest a line of travel, I began to ascend, the rock closing in around me for the first time in a while. This was not an unwelcome feeling, but, as I climbed, an uncomfortable thought began to creep in to my head amidst the echoing scratches of my steps. I couldn’t see the drop any more. Where was it? Was I over it? Was I suddenly going to pop my head above the skyline and be confronted with it?

Feeling suddenly vulnerable – perhaps because the end was in sight – I steered clumsily around the block on the very top and I found a truncated staircase of boulders that led down into the slack between the two towers with a deep gully opening in between. The next tower pushed me off the left – a labyrinth of cracks and slabs above Crib Goch’s steep southern slopes. Traversing around led me to a few scrubby descents and a messy scramble over abrasive rock, but then a gap appeared round the rocks to my left, broad and tufty. Two more moves, then a fizz of relief that shivered through my body.

Crib Goch was done and I allowed myself a little whoop of elation. The platform I was on felt huge, luxuriously so. If I so wished, I could even fall over and not die. I felt like doing it just because I could. And the rest was within reach: an easy descent to my right led into Mal’s valley, and somewhere to put up my tent.

Enjoying the silence, the feeling, and the surge of my heartbeat in my ears, it began to dawn on me where I was standing. Ahead was the Clogwyn y Person arête; the place where, in 1960, John Brenchley, John Itches and Tony Evans became lost in the mist, and fell to their deaths. Right there.

I traced a plumb line from a point on the arête to the valley floor, then another. Any fall from there looked a chilling prospect; even in the comely weather of the evening it was easy to see there wasn’t a thing the boys could have done to save themselves.

After rewarding myself with a biscuit, I pulled my phone out to send a text message to Mal before beginning my descent into the valley for the night.

I had an unread message that I must have missed whilst high on Crib Goch: ‘Forecast poor tomorrow, but rain isn’t due until 3 to 4 a.m. Might be worth heading for the summit tonight. Mal.’

Oh, hell. Really? It was now 10.30 p.m. The legacy of a diffused sunset still faintly lit the sky, but it was weakening. I read the message again, my heart heavy. I could ignore it. I was tired and looking forward to my sleeping bag; and now here was the prospect of another couple of hours’ walk to a much more exposed, rockier place. An ascent into the gathering darkness with a forecast of bad weather wasn’t in my plan – but Mal was right. The last thing I needed was to be clobbered by bad weather in the night, then be faced with either a wild climb to the summit in the rain or a dejected descent back to Pen-y-Pass. I looked down from the col into Cwm Glas, my intended campsite. Immediately I could see two or three accommodating spots a few hundred metres down the valley; one by a stream, another by a small lake. Cups of whisky-spiked cocoa, good, natural shelter, a reprieve from strength-sapped nerves … splendid. I could be there, tent up, in twenty minutes. A hard image to resist.

I looked over to the south-west and balked. A bank of cloud had spilled over Y Lliwedd on the opposite side of the horseshoe – the first wave of an advancing charge of bad weather. Visibility would be the first to go, and much sooner than dawn. If Mal’s forecast was right, rain wouldn’t be far behind. I had no real urge to experience the weather rife within Snowdon’s accident statistics, nor did I have any real urge to become one. One thing was inescapable: the narrow window of stable weather that had remained open for me on Crib Goch was now rapidly closing. If I wanted to get to the top with any degree of decorum I’d have to summit tonight, and quickly.

Pulling out my drink bottle, I peered into it. Half a litre left, at most. Snowdon’s top was a bare cap of rock; no streams, no little lakes with outflows from which to scoop water. I had 300 metres of ascent to go and my throat was already dry as a stick. Rationing my water would be miserable, but possible. After a longing look down the valley towards the campsite that wasn’t to be, I started up the other side of the ridge – the Crib y Ddysgl – this time in haste. The ground was easier, less steep, but still complex. I might even have enjoyed it had I not been eager to beat the weather to the summit.

I can’t tell you when it happened, but at some point I lost the path.

Although the ground beneath my feet no longer had any definition, I could still see. Without the sensory bludgeon of artificial light, darkness quietly creeps up on you. You’ll walk and walk, and then eventually you’ll stop to adjust your clothing or have a wee and realise that at some point, whilst your back was turned, it’s gone and gotten properly dark on you.

I’d been avoiding getting out my head torch, partly to enjoy the primal oddness of climbing a mountain in the cool, grey-blue tones of dusk, and partly because my night vision – slowly matured over the last hour of failing light – would be instantly buggered the second I looked at something bright. My phone map was bright, so I didn’t give it due attention, and before long I was groping up a black slope following my nose. I could see the angled skyline of the mountain above me against the sky – but any sense of scale had long disappeared, along with the detail of the ground. Surely I was almost up by now.

A noise caught me as I stepped over a small gully. It was the giggle of running water. With a cry of happiness, I downed what I had left in the bottle, then found a fast-flowing part of the burrowed-in stream and refilled. Now at least I had something I could cook with.

I continued to freelance along the slope, which was covered in dinner plates of loose scree. Perhaps the darkness was a blessing, as I now had no idea of the consequences of a slip. If it descended smoothly to the valley floor – unlikely, given the considerable height I’d quickly gained – little more than bruises and scuffs. Or perhaps I was on a scree fan draped atop a vertical cliff – in which case, a mis-step, an untidy fall, a roll and a swift acceleration down the loose ground towards an edge …

I shuddered, and focused on my feet and balance. Some of the most dangerous spots on this mountain weren’t knife-edges; they were slopes like this, which didn’t present the same kind of instant, shake-you-by-the-lapels danger that makes your movements delicate, like on Crib Goch. Up there, the peril you’re in is hardly subtle and you can react – if not exactly in a way that will expedite your escape – in a manner that will at least make you pause for considerable thought and a re-check of your movements. But on a slope like this – darkness notwithstanding – it’s quite possible to swagger onto dangerous terrain with your hands practically in your pockets, ignorant of just how lethally steep the ground you’re on is until a slip sends you tumbling down it. This sort of scenario appeared to account for many accidents on Snowdon, particularly in the winter, when snow hid the subtle shifts of the ground. I’d heard a story of a rescue team who were dispatched to find a casualty below a notorious steepening next to the Snowdon railway, which – in winter – becomes a hardened ice slope above the lip of a cliff. The team found a man dead at the base of the cliff, but it was only when descriptions of clothing and timings were compared that the team realised that these didn’t quite match – this person was another victim, as yet unreported. The man they’d been called to assist was found later, also dead.

Amber lights appeared below like the view from an aircraft when I pulled myself over the lip of the ridge and stood up on the broad shoulder that arced towards the peak of Yr Wyddfa* (#ulink_be7f50d7-5bcd-5e68-becc-9bc81e8bf5eb) – Snowdon’s summit. The views from here in daylight are said to be some of Britain’s most expansive; in optimum clarity four countries – England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland – can be seen, as well as the Isle of Man. Although almost hypnotised by the odd sense of seeing this view at night and in only a gentle breeze, I spotted the path and joined it, grateful for the opportunity to relax and enjoy the feeling of approaching the highest point in England and Wales in exhilarating darkness.