Superb weekend in Wales with the District Explorers. Organinsing the event wasen't as easy as expected though, there is far too much paperwork for this sort of thing!

Off on friday towards Wales, taking us about 2.5-3 hours to get to the bunkhouse in Ogwen. Then played about with huge blue curtains in an attempt to segregate up the place for girls/boys/over 18s. Planned what we were going to do tomarrow and got to bed. Got up to some reasonable weather however we knew it was going to turn soon from the weather report and from the front coming in. We first dropped Les off at the cottage, his plan being to go up and do both the Glyders before returning. I led the rest of the group up the North Ridge of Tryfan from Milstone Butress carpark. The team I took was pretty good, all of them having done varying amounts of stuff in the hills and they all moved pretty comfortably on the Scramble. A late addition to our party however was Ken Spencer, the DESCOM for Ormskirk, Ken said he wanted to do Tryfan however he was expecting he'd turn back after a short while... he was wrong. With Ken in tow and one of the party not feeling at their strongest progress wasen't superfast for the first few hours and we stopped to take in some of the sights of Tryfan, including everybody getting their photo taken on the Cannon. About 3ish, we hit the summit in some pretty awful conditions, I reckon it was gusting up towards 50mph and hail/sleet was beginning to come down. Bothy came out to warm everybody up and let them rest/recoup before setting off down towrds the col, decided to sack off Glyder Fach due to detieriating conditions, so ttok a righthand turn down towards the Cwm and then to Car-park. The amount of rain that was coming down was incredible, metcheck recons it was over 12mm in a few hours. Got back to the Bus jsut after 5pm and just before we were going to loose the light, everybody buzzing.

That evening Ken cooked us up a superb feast of curry + rice and muchoss naan bread. Great to have everybody sat round the table together talking about the day.

The next morning Ash and Martin arrived to lend a hand, we had decided that it would be good to try and get everybody up Snowdon as it would give all of them a real sense of achievement. Ash took one group up Crib Goch and I took the other up the Pyg Track. After about 600/700m there was snow lying on the ground and by the time we got to the top there was a good few inches in places. This unfortnately made the steps on the Pyg track above the Glaslyn very slippy making 2 of our party quite nervous, made me glad i'd put a 16ft sling in at the last minute but wishing I'd taken two! Had to dog-lead one of them to the summit from their. Suffice to say everubody felt they had really achieved something, it felt like a real mountain to all of them being covered in snow on top depsite the building work being done on the cafe next door! Decided to take the path back down to Llanberis rather than back down the Pyg track, eventually getting down just before 5pm to be meeted by Les in the bus.

Shot back to the bunkhouse and packed stuff, said by and thanks to everybody and then dove in Ash's car with Carrington in an attempt to get back to Preston for the Greenland dress-rehearsal. Made good time and called a Pizza Hut on the way to pick up a huge amount on Pizza for tea. Managed to wing rehearsal despite writing most of what I was going to say in the back of Ash's car that day. Back home 10ish to crash out absolutely knackered.