{"id":17752,"date":"2014-09-07T08:12:59","date_gmt":"2014-09-07T07:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/?p=17752"},"modified":"2014-09-07T08:12:59","modified_gmt":"2014-09-07T07:12:59","slug":"5-star-mountain-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/2014\/09\/5-star-mountain-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"A 5 Star Mountain Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think that having hit 32 consecutive days on Saturday\u00a0we\u00a0are\u00a0coming to the end of our geocaching streak. We went out on a high though with a 5 star mountain challenge. That’s 5 stars out of 5 stars in case you were wondering.<\/p>\n

As mentioned in a recent post about our \u00a0walks up Cadair Idris and Foel Ispri<\/a>, Morgan and I had embarked on a geocache with the highest difficulty and terrain rating (5\/5) possiible\u00a0(there’s more on the rating system in the aforementioned weblog post). The geocache we were attempting was called Gwyddno’s Mountain Challenge<\/a> and involved finding several clues in 5 different geocaches on mountains in Wales. Each of these caches were fairly demanding in themselves. The questions in them then had to be answered correctly in order to find numbers that would build up the coordinates to the 6th and final geocache location.<\/p>\n

I already done the cache at Foel Dinas back in 2007<\/a> when it was brand new and managed to get the ‘First to Find’ on it.\u00a0I had also found the Llaeron Earth Cache whilst walking the Tarren ridge<\/a> back in 2007. These were both before Gwyddno’s Mountain Challenge cache was published so at the time there were no questions in them. Gwyddno sent us the questions for these though so we only had 3 more to do, plus the final cache. After some lovely days walking on Cadair Idris and Foel Ispri<\/a>, and walking in the Moelwyns<\/a>, we had all of the questions. Some searching\u00a0on the\u00a0Internet, reading of various wikipedia articles and some Google Map research provided me with\u00a0the answers to the questions and therefore the coordinates of the final cache. I checked these and they looked plausible, now we just had to find a day where the weather looked good and Morgan was in the mood for a mountain challenge.<\/p>\n

Saturday was that day. The forecast was for no wind, warm temperatures and wall to wall sunshine. The first challenge for me was getting a balance between setting off early as I would be inclined to do and not rushing Morgan in the morning as he likes to take things easy at the weekend! I’ve been enjoying my walks in the hills with him so I don’t want to put him off. With spare clothes packed and hill-walking kit in the bag, along with a nice packed lunch we managed to leave the house just after 8am for the\u00a0drive north along the coast towards Harlech.<\/p>\n

I can’t give too much away about the location of the final cache for fear of ruining it for others but saying that it is in the Rhinog range of hills is fine. I’d never walked here before and don’t know it at all, in fact, the first time I’d ever been along this bit of coastline was a few weeks back when I cycled around Southern Snowdonia<\/a>. I therefore had no idea what the\u00a0Rhinog hills were like and certainly had little knowledge of them. This was one of the reasons I wanted a nice clear day so that navigation in unfamiliar hills would be a little easier.<\/p>\n

The Rhinogs Hills lie to the East of Harlech and\u00a0are formed of hard sedimentary rocks of Cambrian age which occur as a major anticlinal structure known to geologists as the Harlech Dome<\/b>. The greywackes and gritstones of their northern hills form a\u00a0rocky, rugged terrain with steep hills that are fairly uncompromising. A quick look through online guides to the area have quotes such as:<\/p>\n

The Rhinogs are not hills for a walker who insists on using a path. This is some of the roughest terrain in the UK, with established paths pretty much non-existent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s treacherous terrain where ankles can easily be twisted, either on unstable rocks or among clumps of heather. A good sense of balance is essential.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Short in altitude but utterly uncompromising, the Rhinogs are famously among the wildest and roughest hills in Wales. The northern hills are a chaos of mini crags and heather, with scatterings of little lakes and idyllic wooded valleys – beautiful walking.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Our drive took us past Harlech Castle and then up a narrow track to a small parking spot at Eisingrug. I had to get out of the car at one point along this lane to move some stubborn cows out of the road. At the top there was\u00a0enough room for a few cars to park and\u00a0an honesty box to place a \u00a32 donation towards\u00a0the Air Ambulance to cover the cost of parking. There was also the first geocache of the day which we found and signed.<\/p>\n

With our parking fee \/ air ambulance donation paid – good karma for the walk ahead – we set off along a well marked track. As we left the car behind the weather was nothing like it should have been. We could see down towards the estuary at Porthmadog below us, but there was drizzle in the air and up ahead was a wall of clouds – the Rhinogs themselves were shrouded from view.<\/p>\n

\"Setting<\/a>

Setting off<\/p><\/div>\n

We made our way along the track which was boggy in places and then onto a less well defined path that took us between Llyn Eiddew-mawr and LLyn Eiddew-bach, two remote, desolate looking lakes. We stopped for our second geocache along this trail at a ‘pyramid rock’ before starting the climb up towards Moel Ysgyfarnogod.<\/p>\n

\"Pyramid<\/a>

Pyramid Rock<\/p><\/div>\n

The track reduced down to a steep path, then a poorly defined sheep path and finally disappeared altogether. We could just about make out the outline of a hill ahead of us though as we started climbing ever higher. At one point the clouds lifted a little, just enough for us to see what looked like an easier route along a grassy slope\u00a0between various crags. We headed for that and\u00a0found a nice grassy track alongside the remains of some old stone shelters. There were piles of stones everywhere and the walking was good. Visibility was poor by now though and it wasn’t that warm either. We were soon both forced to put on an extra layer as we made our way up the slopes.<\/p>\n

The next destination was another geocache in amongst the crags of the SW side of\u00a0Moel Ysgyfarnogod. The hillside here is stepped with several vertical, craggy rock faces so knowing which level to be on was difficult in these conditions, but we picked our way up through the crags taking what looked like the safest route. We passed a cool glacial erratic balancing on a few small stones and finally emerged out of the crags onto a domed, smooth mountain top riddled with deep fissures into the rock. We picked our way across the edge of this towards the geocache location where we stopped for lunch.<\/p>\n

\"Balancing<\/a>

Balancing Erratic<\/p><\/div>\n

Visibility was now down to about 10 metres, so we could see nothing of the surrounding area. Picking our way through the crags and boulders hadn’t helped our sense of direction and it was impossible to know what lay ahead. The map showed crags in all directions and no obvious route to the top of Moel\u00a0Ysgyfarnogod. We would have to descend off this little summit heading almost due north before climbing to the top, but with no visibility and therefore no visual navigational aids I would be navigating purely with the compass. The compass seemed less than reliable up here though and seemed to be affected by the rocks.<\/p>\n

Having never been here before I was beginning to think about turning back rather than heading onwards into the unknown. I was of course confident of finding my back the way we had come, but if we continued on that might not continue to be the case. I had a chat with Morgan about it over lunch and was about to decide to head back. It would of course be the safest option and probably a good lesson in hill-walking for Morgan. We may not have made it to our chosen destination and met our objective, but the hills and the geocache would still be there tomorrow – better that we were too rather than risk continuing on in what were now pretty poor conditions.<\/p>\n

However, just as we finished lunch the clouds lifted partially for a short while giving me just enough time and visibility to see Moel\u00a0Ysgyfarnogod to the north and a suitable route both down from the mini summit we were on and up to the top along a little ridge off to our\u00a0NW. That was all I needed, the terrain didn’t look too bad, so we set off as the mist shrouded us once again. It didn’t take long to reach the summit where we stopped at the trig point then headed off to find the next geocache in what were now improving conditions.<\/p>\n\n\t\t