Snowdonia National Park (Wales, September-December 2010)

Snowdon is the highest mountain of Wales and gives the name to the national park and hidden region of Snowdonia. I became interested in it even before I arrived to Wales. It looked important… the wild face of the dragon.

I got the “snow hill” soon, in my first month in Wales. And I used the most difficult way, following the ridge, but to be honest, I begun this beautiful and vertical route because I got lost following a guys and thinking that I was doing the main path from Pen-y-Pass. It’s got maybe the saddest summit, the most touristic one. I met there just a few mountaineers and many other sport men: runners, bikers and even rugby players in T-shirt, but most of the people were tourists, whole families of tourist, children and old people, always with ordinary clothes, of course. They didn’t matter the cold, the wind or the fog. The explanation is not the very easy normal way (a road without cars) but the train to get the Snowdon’s summit from Llanberis, because Wales is not only a country of dragons: It’s the country of trains as well.

With Snowdon, Carrauntoo and Ben Nevis, I had completed a very beautiful British trilogy. There are some people think there are no mountains in Great Britain. I thought so. I didn’t see mountains lowers than two thousands meters. A big mistake. Beauty and difficulty can’t be measured in meters.