Tuesday 29th August 2017 began with me feeling expectedly weary after Moel Hebog GW/NW-014 the previous day.  It was the usual routine for the start of a SOTA day - down to the YHA Members' Kitchen to warm the soup for the flask, and make up the instant porridges for our breakfast.  We had been up on the Glyders just over a year ago, so I was all too well aware of the effort that lay ahead, to get up - and then down - from this chain of mountains!

As this year we were at Snowdon Ranger YHA, as opposed to Idwal Cottage YHA, we first had to undertake a drive of nearly one hour around to the parking area adjacent to the latter hostel.  From here we walked down the lane to the Yr Hafod Scout Activity Centre, then beyond to start picking our way up the hill and through the Mushroom Garden.  This was pretty exhausting and relentless stuff, but with Jimmy always marching out ahead of me, I had no choice but to continue upwards!

After reaching the saddle on the connecting ridge between Y Garn GW/NW-004 (where we would move on to later in the day) and Elidir Fawr GW/NW-005, we paused for a brief rest, then turned right to follow a now much more distinct path up to our first summit.  A couple of sections were a bit "airy", but nothing too uncomfortably exposed.

We had deliberately "travelled light" for this demanding expedition, packing only our VHF handheld radios with us.  So we didn't have the usual additional weight of batteries, FT-817 portable transceivers, microphones or portable aerials and masts, which was rather welcome.  I knew that it would be easy to get out from this chain of mountains on 2m with just the handhelds and stock helical antennas, and so it proved to be.  It would have been tricky to set up proper portable antenna systems, with the entire summit area being just a big pile of rocls!  We enjoyed our soup lunch in the stone summit shelter, before packing up for the traverse.

The next summit was Y Garn GW/NW-004, the next one along the ridge.  When the clouds cleared, a good view of the walk ahead could be had from the summit shelter on Elidir Fawr.