ML (Summer) Training Day Two – Mountain Day

Day 2, Sunday, was to be a day in the mountains. An opportunity to practice the pacing and navigation that we did yesterday, but also to experience some steep ground – to realise what the limit of expectation is for the ML assessment. Our objective for the day was Y Lliwedd (“err clue-eth”). The minibus dropped of us off at Pen – y – Pass and we split into our two groups. Steve paired me up with Joe and got us to set the first objective of the day. We finally settled on a bend in the path where the map showed a wall coming in from our right and off we set.

I managed to count the correct number of paces to our first tick off feature – the path coming in from the right, which led down from the Horns. Unfortunately, at that point I realised that my stopwatch had not started so I had no idea how long we had been walking for, so there was no hope of timing 12.5 minutes to our objective. Luckily, more by luck than judgement, we made it to where we thought we were aiming for, even though there was no wall visible.

Another pair took over and led us to the fork in the path, just before the Miner’s path reaches Lyn Lydaw. From there another pair took us to the point where we to leave the path and really start to head up to the ridge.

A map can be seen here.

We had barely made it a third of the way up the ridge when we were passed by Stu’s party coming down the ridge.

We headed up from our lunch stop to scramble up the rock. Apparently its a grade 1 scramble, but with huge exposure on the left and the slope dropping off to the right it felt much worse. It certainly made me slow down and think about the approach as well as taking things more steadily. Maybe it was just my lack of experience as I don’t think any of the other guys had any trouble.

We worked hard from then on to get up on to the ridge and then pushed on towards the summit. I must admit to finding it hard going in the heat getting up the steep rocky slopes to the top of Y Lliwedd and felt bad for slowing the rest of the team up.

But then it really was down hill all the way back to the car park and we made it bang on time. Unfortunately the other team had been there for a while and had even found time for an ice cream.