Cnicht

[Rekrab]

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on Wed night I got a text from Jude wanting to head out the next morning after my lovely suprise of a day on Moel Hebog I was up for another go at MWIS forecast.
we decided on a quick day oot as Jude wanted ot be back in chester for 16:00 so Cnicht was the hill of choice.
after a quick internet search and a few texts it seemed that the best and fastest route was from Croesor so we headed there.

from Croesor we headed N past the chapel and quickly found the waypoint pointing us to Cnicht.
as soon as we turned the next corner we saw Cnicht and it's long S ridge ahead of us.
I went to take a picture and...wait...where's...my...ohhhh S%^& I forgot it!!!
as a result mobile phone was back up and it didn't really do the trick!

cnicht and it's S ridge

we seemed to have found a dry path in the forecast and the longer we stayed out the more cloud cleared over the tops.
I couldn't believe looking at the tops how they had changed from yesterday. it was a very clear day yesterday and there was still no snow but today above 400m it was full winter conditions.
we continued along the S ridge with off and on bouts of rain
taking in the views from across the valley to Moelwyn Mawr and Croesor quarry below.

Moelwyn Mawr from Cnicht

we quickly made our way to the scramble and it was good chunky handholds which made it very quick for accent.
before we knew it we were on the summit and in the snow!!

Jude on the Scramble section

me on Cnicht my 57th (and possibly last) Hewitt of 2011

while we were up here I also wanted to tick cnicht's n top so we headed along the ridge to do that before heading down.

Looking to Cnichts N top

Looking down to Croesor quarry looking very white.

once we hit the end of the N ridge we needed to find a route down in my reaserch last night everyone seemed to always have difficulty with path finding on the boggy plateau so everyone just headed to Llyn yr Arddu.
Jude is a super Navigation expert and thought that it would be better if we headed to Llyn y Biswail and head on from there. she took a bearing and followed it right to the lake and the rock wall which we were using as landmark.
we then headed to the Bwlch y Battel and then continued SW until we found the land rover track which we came up on.
by this time our dry spell was off and the rain had started proper my jacket started to leak at the arms and I was glad that we were on the descent.
before we knew it we were back in the car and getting the wet gear off.
def going to return to this one in the summer to get some nice pics, a good tick and jude seemed happy to have her feet in the first snows of 2011

thanks for reading

MacKenzie,

[SusieThePensioner]

I enjoyed reading your report and the photos just reflected the weather you had. See worse on WH

[mountainstar]

Yes, nice walk....shame about the pictures ...well you had to forget something!
Again you beat the forecast