As Chair of the Uclan Mountaineering Club my job is to organise awesome experiences for people so to kick off the year I started with the Fresher's trip to Snowdonia, involving a day up Snowdon and a day at Tremadog. I managed to get everything booked and sorted and all the places filled up after days of going out collect deposits and money like a dodgy drug dealer.
We all got to the bunkhouse around 8pm to find Bear and Jimbo chilling with wine by the fire typical. So we got the night kicked off with a few drinks and food well unless you're Mike and you casually fry up some heart and stilton cheese don't ask me, I don't even know why.
In the morning I played mum urging everyone to get moving and sorted for the day before we headed off into Llanberis to Pete's Eat's for breakfast, me being me I just sat impatiently dying to get out on the hill; we eventually got up the Pen Y Pass however parking!! We were unable to park at the bottom of the path so we ended up at a car park and got driven back up to Pen Y Pass by Mike to set off with everyone. Or so we thought......
Having waited for a long time we all set off eagerly, I waited for a girl from the toilets and then wandered off down the path; after a little while the penny started to drop that Jasmine was missing. Me and Rob sprinted back down to find Jasmine walk casually down the path towards us happy as larry while I was panicking. Finally relaxed that we had everyone we could finally start the day properly and we enjoyed a good walk along the lake, up to Lliwedd and along the ridge. I walked at the back the entire way so I assumed everyone was all happy and enjoying themselves up front but we were definitely pretty happy in our slow walkers gang. To be fair I was pretty impressed as Alyson's hip caused her a lot of jip but she carried on despite the pain which I wouldn't have done, I would have whined a whole lot more.
We all rejoiced when we got to the top as I knew it was the first mountain for a lot of our group so we queued up for the summit. Wait what?! That's what I said, queued! On the highest point of England and Wales us British will queue and wait patiently to go stand on the constructed summit to get a picture what absurd people we are.
Unfortunately there wasn't much of a view as the clouds had came down so we walked almost all the way down in grey haze, something happened that touched my heart on the trudge down. We were about to walk under one of the railway bridges and we heard music and saw people pulling rope and I thought what the hell? Until around the corner a guy in a wheelchair appeared with about 6 people pulling him along. I thought it was awesome as they were already about two thirds of the way up and looking knackered, I wasn't sure what it was for, a charity or something but good on them anyway.
Sunday morning and a few people were hanging so it was slightly harder to get people moving and packed, we headed off to the crag early and got some ropes set up and got people climbing when they all arrived; feeling like my job was done for the mean time I escaped for a bit with Mike to the lower tier of Tremadog to do Christmas Curry. We did have to do a different route than intended as some
arseholes made us wait for ages. But we still had a good climb on Merlin Direct which took longer than necessary due to the arseholes, we had to sprint back to the upper tier to get everyone packed up. However by the time we had climbed a few fences, walls and scrambled through trees an bushes to get back everyone had sorted themselves out and chased after them back down the hill to the minibus.Talking to people they all had a good climb, for many the first time they had ever climbed on rock before which was nice and they all seemed really eager for future trips so I have my work cut out for me. Being able to organise that for people and allow them that space to have these new experiences and introduce them to the amazing world of the outdoors was really rewarding, sharing the way I see the outdoors around me was quite fulfilling and made the hard work organising worth it. I would like the thank the weather for holding out, it was absolutely glorious; I would also recommend Eric's cafe which we visited and met the man himself a rather ordinary looking old man until you know what he's accomplished but he was absolutely lovely!
