Why? Well, why not!! And so at 22:00 on a Friday I go to bed with the alarm set at 00:40 the next day. I want to go on the Snowdon to see the sunrise and so by 01:20 I’m already in the car with my photography gears ready. I want to ascend from Pyg Track, it is probably the most popular path to summit Snowdon because the total vertical ascent is just over 700 meters since it starts from Pen-y-Pass car park (LL55 4NY) which is at about 360 meters above sea level and it offers some quite dramatic views. It is a path I’ve done a lot of times when I was training for the Three Peaks Challenge but I don’t get tired of it. I guess it is because the scenery is rugged and after the initial part you are in sight of the summit and have Crib Goch, a narrow ridge that leads to the summit, on your right side and on your left side, a couple of hundred meters below, you have the almost constant company of the Glaslyn and the Llyn Llydaw, two lakes that display a range of beautiful colors no matter the weather.
At 03:00 I’m at the Pen-y-Pass parking lot, it is still dark but head-torch on and I’m on my way. I catch up with a couple of people that left the parking lot a few minutes before me and then I’m alone with myself and my thoughts for the rest of the way. And that probably was all I was craving when I decided to come up here, a moment of solitude and silence. As probably the majority of people nowadays my mind goes 1000mph all day every day, from one thought to the next, from one worry to the other, but then I gift myself with a day like this and after I settle in all goes quiet. There is something “mechanical” about it at the beginning, all I feel is air in and out of my lungs and the legs’ muscles stretching, contracting then relaxing again. Breathing and movement became a rhythm, a rhythm that is all mine and then, no more.
It is now 04:00 as I reach the cross-road with Miners’ Track and a dim light starts pervading the sky. I can now switch off my head-torch as my eyes adjust and I hear the water of the little brook ahead of me crashing gently on the rocks below. It is not my rhythm anymore and as my breath and muscles it is now part of something else. Brings me back to many years ago climbing in the Alps, on the glacier at dawn the bite of the crampons on the ice, the shattering of the ice pick on thin ice or the comforting deaf-tone as it hit solid ice became only a background to the revealing nature of the moment. The sound of rocks crashing as they fell from the spires at the edge of the glacier, thin crystal bridges crossing crevasses hundreds of meters deep were and always were meant to be part of that moment. As an alate landed frazzled near my boot I wonder “Why are you here? Are you here by design or were you swept here by a momentous wind? Were you on a quest or were you cast away by vehement desires?”. It doesn’t matter why, it never did. Here I’m one, here I’m me. The line between night and day, life and death is so thin almost it doesn’t exist and here it is just part of a whole and I’m part of it. Here I feel alive, a beat in a rhythm which is life, another life. Small like the alate on the glacier, arrived there moved by whatever force but then part of it and whatever moved it to begin with it did not matter anymore, it was just part of the whole.
It is 04:30 now and I just reached the summit and no, I won’t have the sunrise I wanted. It is a bit cloudy today and I won’t have full view of the sun for almost another hour. I take some pictures and think that it is the way it is and all that matters is what I do of it. I gifted myself with such a great day. Moved to be up here by, if you wish, an ego driven and unjustified conviction that I would have what I wanted, I ended up living one of those rare moments where I really feel alive and part of a whole. I descend Pyg Track until it crosses Miners’ Track and I go down that way until I reach Glaslyn lake. I feel good, energised and it is time for a run back to the parking lot. If you have the chance I really invite you to visit this beautiful part of the world. The hikes on Snowdon are all very accessible but, unless you have a certain experience, avoid Crib Goch until you are confident enough in your ability or go with somebody that already knows what to expect. That said feel free to get in touch if you wish to have more info and leave a comment. You can also follow me on YouTube and Instagram
