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A trip over to the Brecons between Christmas and New Year is becoming a tradition for me, I was busy on Sunday when the weather was good so Monday looked the best day (although as it got closer the window of good weather closed somewhat).
Given the heavy rain recently and overnight I opted for the Storey Arms route, which I'd not been up before anyway, but thought a good path would be useful and the wind would be at our back on the way up.
Met up with Tom (Ibex) and his wife at the Storey Arms car park, by the time we set of it was 11:30ish, the rain had just about stopped, but the clouds were still there and there was some drizzle around. The wind didn't drop as much as I'd hoped, it was behind us so no problem, we were soon up in the clag. We skipped Corn Du on the way up - hoping the clouds would have lifted more by our return. After 70 mins we arrived at Pen-y-Fan, to be welcomed by the odd gust of horizontal hail, took a summit photo and dropped down over the south edge for a spot of lunch. Tom and his wife headed back after lunch and I pushed on to Cribyn.
As soon as I'd dropped 50m I came out of the cloud (there are some photos from this point on). In no time I was soon up on Cribyn, from there I headed towards Fan-y-Big, but missed it out, circling back around the path (stream!) under Cribyn to ascend Pen-y-Fan for the second time, then off to Corn Du. The north side of Corn Du wasn't too windy so I had a short coffee stop there, then left via the southern ridge - where the wind was so strong I had trouble standing up! I'd got the walking poles out for the descent, stopping them from blowing horizontal every time you lifted one off the ground when going down the short rocky section off the summit was a challenge. After that it was straight back down the tourist path to the car.
Plenty of people still ascending at 3pm - OK if you are just going to Pen-y-Fan and back perhaps - but this included two separate families with very young children. Hard to believe they were going to be up before dark, let alone down again.
Rain set back in on the drive home - so although the weather didn't clear as much as suggested - we had the best of it.
Photo's here:
https://plus.google.com/photos/106459429880001195754/albums/5963316117591370481