Crib Lem

I had several people ask me, upon finding out where I live, if I had done Crib Lem. It's a scramble in the far end of Cwm Llafar (where I had been many times, including with Monique.) And I hadn't. This was probably one of those things I wanted to do with someone who knew what they were doing. And then I saw that very scramble advertised. This was by Mountain Craft; a different company than the one with which I had done Bristly Ridge, but I generally have faith in these mountain guides. They tend to be lovely people. I signed up. I had had a lovely time with Bristly ridge, and I hoped this would be as good.

We met close to my house; it was just Jacob, the mountain guide, a lady he already knew: Poppy, and me. It was a bit drizzly. And we started walking through the village to Cwm Llafar. 

We were still in the village and it started raining seriously. Oh well! The forecast was that it would get drier. And when we walked into the valley it was quite foggy, but there was enough visibility to enjoy the scenery at least a bit.

Into Cwm Llafar

At the head of the valley there are some enormous boulders, and we figured we wanted to use one as shelter and have a little coffee break before we vote start on the actual scramble. Needless to say that I thought that was an excellent idea. And after the coffee would be would woke up the fairly steep slope, to a diagonal, and then actually start scrambling. It was still quite wet and also quite windy.

Coffee under a roof. Pic by Jacob

Heading up

The scramble wasn't very technical. But it was fun! Sometimes you had to think a bit where you would put your hands and feet, and I did sometimes use some Alpine knee or Alpine other body parts if that helped. If there were several choices of a line to take, Jacob tended to go conservative, as in this rain the terrain was more than average slippery, and the wind made it feel a bit exposed.

Jacob helping Poppy up a tricky bit

I tried to take some pictures. My phone isn't keen on this sort of weather, so I was using my waterproof camera. Jacob took a few as well. He was especially keen on Poppy and me posing just before a slab. And after we had actually descended that the slab and moved to where he had been standing when he took the picture, we understood what he was about. It was a fine slab! 

Christmas tree slab. Pic by Jacob

When it was about 1 pm we came to a part of the ridge where it felt sheltered from the wind, so we sat down there for lunch. It was still raining, so we didn't linger particularly long. We also decided that even though the original plan had been to get to the summit plateau, walk around to yr Elen, and then go down that ridge, we now decided that once we would be at the top, we were probably OK with just coming off the hill as efficiently as possible.

When we had lunch, most of the ascent was done. From there it was now mostly a walk. And then we got to the top!

The ridge had protected us from the worst of the wind, so now we got it full in our faces. It was pretty awful! Staying upright was not trivial. So we did a quick damp selfie and then headed down, helped by some technology, as the mist necessitated some navigation more intricate than just seeing where you want to go and going there. We still had to traverse some boulder fields, but after not too much time we were on the path over Mynydd Du. And not much later we dropped below cloud base. That was nice! And it even got dry.

Summit selfie.  Pic by Jacob

Out of the cloud.  Pic by Jacob

By the time we were in Bethesda proper, some parts of my trousers were already dry. And then we went our separate ways.

I'm absolutely going to keep an eye on what else this guy has to offer. I enjoyed this! And he is also open to suggestions. So I should ponder a bit which other parts of the local mountains I haven't done yet, and am not confident doing on my own. Maybe I can fit in another similar adventure before the summer is over!