Snowdon, no thanks – PYB, that's for me! – Kim Adams

'Let's see if you can find that boulder marked on the map there!'  Just one day in on the introduction to navigation skills at Plas y Brenin and I could!  Could you?

Part way up Snowdon with the NKHC team in July I dropped out as I realised I was bored: main tourist route, straight up the hill - what was there to excite me?  Certainly not the thought of the café packed with grockels at the top!

It was a good club trip in many other ways - an early start with Alison and Tony L on the Friday made for an afternoon exploring the hills taking in the view of Tryfan from the top of Moel Siabod.  Saturday night saw us all preparing and enjoying an ample barbecue.  And the location of the club hut we stayed in perhaps allowed us to save a life. (Expectant mothers in heat waves at altitude are a law unto themselves).

However. The two days that I spent on the Introduction to Navigation course at Plas y Brenin (the National Mountain Centre) in North Wales really did show me the beauties, features and fragile balances of the Welsh Hills.  I certainly recommend this course - it uses real life to introduce skills of map reading, using a compass, estimation of time and distances to be travelled and working with features of the landscape. Instead of following the main marked path up Cnicht our small group chose to take a stream as our 'handrail' until we reached a wall, then follow that for 200m, take a compass bearing to find the sheepfold marked on the map, then cut across the land to a point where we could see there would be a change in gradient, skirt that and then ascend to meet the last part of the marked path to the summit.  Grid reference: 647466. Yes now - probably very much to Nick's relief - I can give grid references.

I'd like to put these skills in to practice on NKHC weekends and perhaps in writing this I can encourage others to break away from the well-trodden paths.

If you would like to know more about Plas-y-Brenin, their website is www.pyb.co.uk.  Or email me and I will forward to you their newsletter.  Oh and by the way their grid reference is 718 578 on OS Explorer OL17.

<Note from Nick: Kim didn’t mention if she did night navigation at Plas y Brenin. It would have helped with the tricky 100m “well-trodden path” from the pub in Rhyd-Ddu to the hut on the Friday night.>