Wales - 2014
24 August 2014 ........... Elidir Fawr
A forecast of a front arriving in the evening with dry weather and clear tops up until then tempted me out for a trip to Elidir Fawr.
I parked up above Deiniolen, and headed up the private road that goes up to the reservoir Marchlyn Mawr, cut off the road at the lower reservoir, and headed up to Elidir Fach.
On the top of Elidir Fach there was a complete covering of grey cloud up above, but visibility was quite good, and I could even see the white water of the tide race off North Stack.
However Snowdon was in cloud, and as I climbed up to Elidir Fawr I became increasingly aware of a large cloud mass and rain heading up from the south west.
Elidir Fawr is a ridge with quite a lot of big chunky rocks covering quite a lot of it, so it requires a bit of lightweight scrambling to head up to the summit, so quite good fun.
However I was pushing on, because I didn`t like the look of the weather that was coming, and I got to the summit just as the rain started.
So I grabbed a quick sandwich and these pictures, before it all dissappeared into cloud.
To the north east, the Carneddau were still enjoying some decent weather, with the south west face of Pen yr Ole Wen looking very imposing -
The rest of the Glyders were just on the edge of the muck that was coming, with Glyder Fâch just catching the cloud.
I was just grabbing pictures, so wasn`t concentrating too much on framing - it would have been better if I had been pointing just a wee bit more round to the left, to get a better view of Foel-goch, it only just makes it into the picture.
It would be a good ridge walk from Y Garn down to Foel-goch and up to Elidir Fawr, but not the easiest one to get access to, as it is sort of inbetween Nant Friancon and Llanberis.
The Snowdon block was well into the cloud, only Crib Goch is showing - about ten seconds after I took this picture, even Crib Goch was gone.
By now it was raining in earnest, and although it wasn`t heavy, it was very wetting rain that went through anything, so I was away.
The big chunky blocks were now quite slippy , so it was slow going to get away from the summit, just when I wanted to go fast.
It rained all the way down until I got down to Marchlyn Mawr, and then it briefly stopped, but looking back up, the cloud base was well down Elidir Fawr.
Walking back down the road, the rain started again, but I could look across to Anglesey, and the whole island was bright and dry - later on the rain did sweep across, and Anglesey dissappeared behind a grey wall.
By the time I got back to the public road the weather was clearing, and by the time I got to the A 4244 all the tops were clear again.
So although I can tick the box for Elidir Fawr, it doesn`t give me much satisfaction in doing so, it was a dissappointing day.
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