The Welsh Three Peaks Challenge
Fri, 21 Aug 2020
Climbing the three tallest mountains in Wales within 24 hours, totalling a height of just over 2,300m.
Having spent the past five months of lockdown sat at home working and watching TV, my housemates and I decided to break the habit by diving straight into the deep end and taking on the Welsh Three Peaks Challenge.
Having just bought a new car, I was more than happy to be the designated driver for the trip. Not thinking about the fact that the trip alone would take up about a month and a half of my mileage allowance for my finance - oops.
The only pre-planning we did for the challenge was booking a hotel close to Snowdon, we were going to plan the routes up each mountain as we were driving to them, none of us even did a single day of training. The whole situation was pretty ambitious, but we knew we were going to have a good time trying it.
Driving to Wales
Friday 8:25pm
Setting off for a seven-hour drive this late was quite a weird feeling, but it had to be done, as we wanted to be off Snowdon before sunset the following day. It worked out perfectly though, as I needed to pick up my housemates who were dotted around North-West London on the way - so there was no traffic!
The long journey gave us plenty of time to plan the route we'd be taking up the first mountain. We were using an app called Footpath for our offline navigation around the mountains, all we needed to do was find a gpx file for the route online and put it into the app.
Pretty much the whole drive was in the dark, so we didn't get to see many sights along the way. However, I have never had so much fun driving in my entire life. All the roads we drove down in Wales were B roads, but they were all two-laned and had catseyes the whole way. That accompanied with Google maps, which would give me a bit of warning on the corners, it was genuinely like a real-life racing game - keeping to speed limits of course ;)
Mountain #1 - Pen y Fan (886m)
Saturday 2:21am
It was very exciting getting to the first mountain, but also slightly frightening due to the fact it was in the middle of nowhere, in the pitch black. It had just started lightly raining too, which made getting geared up just that slight bit more difficult as we were all trying to do it in the car.
It took a good while to get into the flow of walking uphill, it was clear we'd all gotten quite unfit during the lockdown. We had one goal of this whole trip, and that was to climb each mountain faster than the average time that we could find online. Pen y Fan was 1:30h, and we smashed that 😎
PEAKED!
Saturday 3:13am
Getting down the mountain unfortunately ended up taking us longer than the climb up, as we made the rookie mistake of assuming the route would be just as easy to follow as it was on the way up. We didn't bother looking at the map, as we knew the whole route was marked with a brick path.
The darkness mixed with the rain meant that we could only see about a metre ahead of ourselves, and little did we know, many other paths had been joining onto ours as we made our way up the mountain. So we ended up adding about half an hour to our total time through accidentally following the wrong path.
Mountain #2 - Cadair Idris (893m)
Saturday 7:03am
Sunrise happened on the journey to Cadair Idris, and we were finally exposed to the gorgeous views of the Welsh countryside. As nice as it was that we could actually see where we were walking now, the rain was still a bit of a bummer, but we tanked on!
We decided to take the pony path for this mountain, as it was the shortest walking distance out of them all, but this of course came with the trade-off that it was steeper than the others too. However, we were still feeling good after how well we did at climbing Pen y Fan, we could take on anything.
About halfway up I almost backed out. It was just so steep for so long, we were all shattered and the strong winds were making it even more of a battle. Luckily, we could never see the peak, as the clouds were limiting our vision to about 10m, so we were always under the impression that we were almost there.
PEAKED!
Saturday 8:40am
We had read online that we should leave about 5-6 hours for the whole climb, and strong climbers could do it in about 3. So when we reached the peak within 1:40h, we felt amazing. Completely smashed it, and we were way ahead of schedule so we had a long break in the stone hut that you can find up there.
It wasn't until we were halfway down the mountain that we crossed paths with another group of hikers for the first time. That was when it hit me with how surreal this whole experience was, it was 9:30am and we'd already climbed two mountains 🤯
Mountain #3 - Snowdon (1,085m)
Saturday 1:13pm
We were finally at the main event, one of the main reasons we took on this challenge in the first place. We were going to be following the miner's track path, as it was recommended to us before we had even left.
However, when we arrived at Pen y Pass car park, we discovered that they had recently changed it to pre-book only, and were turning people away at the entrance... We didn't know about this, so we drove a few miles down the road to take the park and ride as suggested by the parking people, only to find that was also closed because it was full.
It was a distressing moment, we stopped off in the town down the road for lunch and to come up with a plan. It turns out that the town we stopped at had a train to take you up Snowdon - but that was also fully booked.
To our frustration, we had to just give up, as it was starting to get late and there was no point climbing if you wouldn't be able to make it back down before sunset. We headed back to the hotel and we all pretty much crashed as soon as we sat in our beds, waking up only to get an Indian delivered at 9:30pm.
We weren't planning on trying Snowdon again, as the tickets for Sunday had already sold out, and I also did not want to do a 9-hour drive after climbing the tallest mountain in Wales, it was already going to a horrific drive.
But then I woke, and I just knew I could not leave without giving it our best. I told the guys and to my surprise, they did not complain at all. We looked up to see if there were any other routes up Snowdon that didn't involve parking in the car parks we came across yesterday, and that is when we discovered the Snowdon Ranger path.
Mountain #3 (again) - Snowdon (1,085m)
Sunday 12:34pm
The weather was so much better than the day before, which really helped to lift our spirits. We were in a lot of pain, but it was nothing compared to what we felt like during the London-Brighton Ultramarathon Hike, and I think that's what kept us from complaining as much as we normally would've been.
One of the most stressful parts of this trip was the fact that each car park had a pay & display machine, but we never had change. We'd got lucky the past two mountains because of how early in the day we'd done them, but Snowdon was a bit later. Luckily, we managed to catch a couple who'd just returned from a walk, they offered us their ticket which had 2:30h left on it.
We'd already looked up the time we needed to beat for this path, and it was 6-7 hours. However, boys will be boys, 2:30h was now the time to beat.
The first 30 minutes of the walk were quite demanding, I was carrying about 1.5l of water alongside a tub of cooked pasta, which I learned from my last fundraiser is a miracle food 😎. After that though, the walk was pretty relaxed for a good hour.
We were blessed with the views, it was quite a clear day other than the clouds around the peak. I also got a chance to have one of the most scenic lunches of my life.
The last part of the mountain was a bit of a killer, but I would still say that Cadair Idris was much harder. We were making really good progress, but there was a group behind that kept closing distance on us. We were really pushing ourselves to not be overtaken by them, not because we are stubborn or competitive, but because we wanted someone to take a photo of us at the top 😅
PEAKED!
Sunday 2:51pm
PEAKED!
Sunday 2:51pm
It turns out we didn't need to push so hard to make sure we had people behind us to take a photo for us, as there was a huge queue of people waiting at the top for the same reason. Nonetheless, it meant that we managed to peak Snowdon in 2:20h! The only challenge left for us now was making it down in the next 10 minutes to make sure I didn't get a parking fine.
Getting to the peak of a mountain gives you such a great feeling of accomplishment, you completely forget about the pain and exhaustion you've been going through for the past couple of hours. Snowdon felt even better though, as we were so close to not even attempting it. I felt great knowing that I'd done exactly what I'd set myself out to do, even though it wasn't quite in the 24 hours that we had originally planned.
My knees were in a lot of pain for the whole way down, I was lucky to have some hiking sticks to relieve the stress but it still took us a bit longer than it should've to get to the bottom. We got back to my car at 5:30pm, where I had the longest drive of my life.
I eventually got back to my home in Kent just after 1am, absolutely shattered but feeling incredibly proud. We climbed just over 2,300m in total, and I also drove over 700 miles. From this fundraiser alone I managed to raise over £600, which is incredible.
I will definitely be doing something like this again, watch this space!