Organising a walk
Posted on August 16, 2019
Organising a walk
So you’re thinking of planning a walk up Snowdon?
- You’ll need to ask yourself the following questions:
- Does anyone in the group have hill walking experience?
- Is everyone in the group fit enough?
- Is everybody properly equipped?
- Are you planning to go between May and September?
If you answered no to any of these, then you’ll need to ask yourself if you’re doing the right thing.
Experience. If you lack the experience of hill walking, get the group to pay for a qualified mountain leader. It’s a small price to pay, and ensures your party will be safe.
Fitness. Your group can only go as fast as the slowest member. You should be happy that it’s within the ability of all in the group. It’s five to six hours of hard graft, maybe even more if you’ve a slow member. I’ve felt fine after a 2hrs 30min up AND down on Snowdon, but guiding a group up on an 8 hour trip left me sore, aching and exhausting!
Equipped. The basics can be bought quite cheaply these days – and most people will have the basics anyway. You may need some decent footwear (trail shoes or sturdy trail running trainers are perfectly fine. Boots are recommended, but in my opinion, aren’t always needed. I’ve sprained my ankle only once, and that was with boots. Grip is much more important and trails shoes from Inov8 are the grippiest, most confidence boosting footwear known to man).
Whatever you do, don’t wear jeans – they are hopeless when wet. Try to avoid cotton tees as well, but if you insist, just take a few spares as once they get wet with sweat, they’re next to useless. They will cool you however, so maybe in the height of summer you’ll be thankful!
Snowdon can easily see snow fall most months of the year. There have been dustings recently as late as June and as early as September. October onwards sees the snows, and this can be the case far into April. After a particularly decent snow season, there are some parts (such as the top of the PYG track) where snow will remain even when melted elsewhere.
Of course, you can also have some wonderful days in this period – all the images on this page were taken at the end of October – so make sure you keep an eye out on the mountain forecast and be prepared to cancel if it turns out to be adverse.
Take a look at the video on this link for more information.