All pics: Jamie Edwards

Do you ever know that something is a really bad idea but for some reason feel that, because everyone else is doing it, you better had as well? This was the feeling I had when Rex told me that an expedition up Snowdon with DH bikes was planned. I knew the walk up would probably kill me and I knew that it’d be cold and wet, and that I had little or no suitable equipment – definitely no walking boots. Also, it would involve starting the walk up at 7am and my bike would quite likely fall apart half way back down. Still, I had to go. Obviously,the descent was going to be amazing and I definitely didn’t want to miss out.

The climb from Llanberis to the summit was pretty mellow for the first mile or so. We’d started out at 6.30am so as to get up and down before too many walkers were up and about (there’s a voluntary agreement not to ride Snowdon during most of the day in the summer months – that wasn’t in operation in February but we did the early start anyway, we’re nice like that) so it was obviously dark, raining and bloody cold. But things were OK. As with every walk up a hill I quickly watched the rest of the group pull away into the distance and cursed my parents for giving me short, fat legs. To be fair, most of the group were tooled up on a cocktail of energy goodies that would have put Lance Armstrong to shame so I suppose I shouldn’t grumble.

Inappropriate footwear

It was about two hours in, round about the cloud line, that I started to realise that perhaps climbing Snowdon, in February, in worn out Etnies wasn’t the brightest idea. I think what clicked it was when I had to lock my brakes and crouch down to stop gale force winds packed with ice and snow from dragging me and my bike clean off the mountain and back down into Llanberis. From that point, the walk up got a bit more exciting as we had raging winds, ice, freezing temperatures AND thick mist to deal with. The hikers who passed us fully kitted out in Cotswold’s finest must’ve laughed at the bunch of retards dragging pushbikes up the hill kitted out in trainers, woolly hats and body armour with bits of towel cut up for scarfs. And they’d have laughed the hardest at Joe, who decided it was OK to make the climb in his shorts and pads. With a mile to go things started to look even more stupid. The path was completely frozen solid, the wind had graduated to a blizzard and it was so cold that my brake fluid had thickened to the point that the brakes wouldn’t work. Even my beard was iced up. The funny thing is, I seem to remember everyone just giggling all the way. It was probably hysteria.

Three hours in and I was slowly trudging behind the group, following the (possibly imaginary) voices in the fog up ahead. I knew we were getting near the top because the path started to get really steep and rocky and was getting bloody slippy. Everything was frozen solid, visibility was about 10-15 metres, temperature was around -10 and the blizzard had got to a point where it was safe to say that coming down was going to be a tad risky. Again, we got the feeling the whole thing was getting a bit stupid. When we regrouped the decision was made to get to the top, get the souvenir photo and get down – no pissing around. I think there was more giggling at this point.

Eventually after another shove I could hear Rex yelling from somewhere above me telling me to “get my arse up here ‘cos it’s bloody freezing and some lads are waiting to take our photo”. Walking straight towards his voice I lost the path completely, wandered on to some icy rocks and ended up stuck. Worn out Etnies with slick soles and holes in them aren’t the best for these situations. I ditched the Patriot, clambered over the rocks and up onto the summit. At last!

Faff

We took a minute on the summit to get some pics and de-ice our kit. I’d had my full face and pads strapped to my bag so they were properly frozen up. The only solution was to scrape the ice off my goggles, stick my hat on under my full face and pad up over my trousers. A fashion faux-pas for sure but I guessed that in this case it’d be OK. Joe’s shorts choice again proved a good one as he noticed that his leg hairs were full of ice. Anyway, there was some more giggling at the stupidity of it all before we set off on the descent.

Because of the stupidness of the final ascent, we decided it was best to start down the train track and then link onto the main bridleway further down, thus missing out the sheets of death ice and hopefully some of the windier parts. The train tracks started off OK – fast going and pretty rough but a good laugh.Five minutes in and Malcolm was treated to the first puncture which got fixed on probably the windiest part of the mountain. Good spot.

From here on down the descent was nothing short of amazing, totally making up for the three hours of pushing to get up. There was one point where Rex hit a tunnel and got literally stopped dead by the wind, but other than that the weather perked up a treat. From the end of the tracks right down to the car park is just one huge rock garden filled with big, fat boulders. There’s the occasionaly arrangement of big rocks into steps but for the most part they’re just littered all over the place, making miles and miles of jumps, drops and bone-shaking tech sections.

Woop!

Because of the length of the walk up we took our time getting down, sectioning some of the larger rocky bits. One of the best features we played on was a big, long rocky downhill section into a tunnel that you could really motor through. It was about 40 feet long and split into two sections. AJ and Rex were both on their brand new 224s and Jamie and Reace both had big demo bikes from The Edge in Chester so they were all having a lot of fun seeing what £3.5k-worth of travel gets you. Apparently it gets you through a bloody gnarly rock garden with little or no fuss. Still, I was having loads of fun battering through it on the short travel Patriot – certainly not as fast as the big hitters but chucking in little tweaks here and there, trying to bounce off stuff and rolling out grinning everytime. I think we were all quite pleased with how fast we were hitting this until Joe pedaled his Sunday straight into it, took off and cleared the whole thing in probably three bounces. The boy’s 14 and he’s wrong in the head… absolutely flat out all the way.

The rest of the descent was much the same, motoring through big rock sections and grinning like loonies. Considering how gnarly it was we got down reasonably unscathed. Malcolm came out the worst taking a couple of stacks and leaving his arm in a runny mess. Reace and Alexander managed to stay on their bikes but filled a rucksack with busted inner tubes, Reace blowing both his wheels in one go. It was well worth making the early start, and save for one walker who took the piss for me lagging behind the group they were all remarkably friendly. We all gave them a quick thanks on the way past and they returned the compliment – no fuss and no bad attitude.

So the moral of the story is that it’s sometimes good to go and do stupid things, even if you can hear the voice-over for your very own episode of 999 as you get kitted up. It’s clearly stupid to hike up the second largest mountain in the UK in Febuary wearing trainers, laughing in the face of mother nature and years of sensible mountain safety advice. It is also, fortunately, bloody good fun. Get a map of Llanberis, pack some warm kit, take a lot of inner tubes, a bit of munch and give it a crack. Absolutely ridiculous fun bottom to top and back down again. Possibly choose a month that isn’t February, though. Oh aye, and do everyone a favour and give a nod to the walkers on the way down!