Last weekend was supposed to involve a bivi on Snowdon on Saturday night. Our thorough preparation for this entailed getting through to the caravan late on Friday and then going karting on Saturday morning. I'm pleased to report that my mad driving skillz came to the fore, and I was second out of four people. Obviously owning the Megane has taught me how to coax every last bit of speed out of a vehicle! You may think that I'd be happier with first place, but James always wins because he has a rally car, which is basically cheating. ;) On Friday evening I was given a head-cam by my brother as a birthday present, so we eagerly put that to good use at the karting too. Unfortunately we didn't get the angles quite right, so I ended up with 20 minutes of footage of tarmac! Nevertheless, I predict it being awesome for winter climbing, and it's a good excuse to go karting again as well. The bivi idea was abandoned in worsening weather that evening. Instead I went a bit further east and managed to sneak in a quick run on the Glyders, which were dry and cloud-free.
From Idwal Cottage I did my planned loop of the cwm, past the bottom of Devil's Kitchen, and was back at the lake outflow within 25 minutes. Figuring that this was a bit short to count as a proper run, I decided to head up the steep slope on the west of the cwm to Llyn Bochlwyd. My original intention was to head down the waterfall path back to Ogwen, or maybe carry on up to Bwlch Tryfan if I was going well. As it happened, the weather held out and I couldn't resist heading all the way to the summit of Tryfan. I only stopped for a few seconds on the top, and then descended the west face path. It's quick, but a complete killer on the legs as it's paved and very steep. Nevertheless, I made the Tryfan ascent and descent in a further 1h20m after the Idwal loop, which I was very pleased with. Disappointingly, I managed to twist my ankle pretty badly falling over on the last step onto the paved path to Idwal Cottage, just where I was slowing up to begin my cool down. It's giving me a little bit of grief, but seems to be settling down now.
One unusual factor with this run was the presence in my bag of Gareth's phone, which has an application to track running or cycling sessions using GPS. I downloaded the resulting GPX file to my PC, and had a couple of options for analysis. If it's just map data you're after, I'm a big fan of Where's the Path? It's a website which puts OS maps and Google maps side-by-side, and allows you to plot routes, import GPX files, and view basic elevation data (see below).
Viewing a GPX route in Where's the Path?
However, I subsequently discovered Ascent, which seems to be that rarest of things – a decent GPS training analysis tool for the Mac. I've only played with it for a few minutes, but the first signs are encouraging.
Viewing a GPX route in Ascent
Anyway, things went a little downhill from there – James was ill on Saturday evening and the pub trip was abandoned, and we then spent all Saturday night listening to torrential rain falling on the caravan roof. Our wet weather backup plan for Sunday was climbing, but with James poorly and my ankle playing up, we took a leisurely drive home instead. On that basis it might not sound like the most successful of weekends, but I actually had a really good time and it was good to have a proper caravan get-together again.
P.S. Sorry for the lack of photos, my camera's broken.
