I hadn’t been up in about ten years. The last few times I climbed it were for other reasons, once for the exposure and the challenge of it, a few times in an attempt to share a formative experience with students. Something about endeavour, maybe, or what you find when you push yourself somewhere unfamiliar. I’m not sure it worked, but the intention was there.
This time there was no real reason beyond wanting a view and some space to think.
We took the Pyg Track on a busy Saturday. Busier than I’ve ever seen it with mini mountain path traffic jams and a multitude of clothing, some maybe less than ideal for the wet summit. At some point we passed a succession of groups moving at pace, perhaps doing the Three Peaks, or something like it. I recognised the energy immediately. Ten years ago that would have appealed to me with the logistics, the challenge, the story to tell afterwards. It doesn’t now, and I noticed that without quite being able to explain it.
I walked slowly. A mountain guide in Nepal once told me to place each foot fully before lifting the other, taking a micro pause on each extended leg rather than pushing straight through. The memory returned somewhere on the lower path and I just kept doing it. It became a meditation on the climb up.
My companion valued quiet in the same way I am learning to, so there was no pressure to fill the gaps. We stopped often. Not for rest particularly, just to look. The outline of a distant peak emerging briefly through cloud. Wild thyme growing in a crack in a stone wall on the approach. Maidenhair fern doing something improbable in the gap between two rocks, completely unbothered by everything above it.
I took fewer photos at the top than I expected. More of the edges and of the unexpected.
Yr Wyddfa is the mountain’s Welsh name. Snowdon is what most people I know call it, and what most people seem to search for. I’d always used them interchangeably before. This time Yr Wyddfa felt more accurate, though I can’t say why exactly.
Mindful Trails 