And So it Begins!

Its Saturday the 2nd of February, its 9am, we're stood at the highest natural point in southern UK, its well below freezing, snow and ice is being whipped up from the ground by the powerful Welsh winds.Pen y Fan, 886 meters(2,907 ft) above sea level.A handful of AndersonBrecon employees of all ages, job titles and fitness levels stand almost alone at the peak.

About 4 weeks ago I (Adam) was approached by Lyndon asking if i'd be interested in doing something special for charity, intrigued,I asked for more information. It turned out that Lyndon was looking for a team of staff from AB to possibly complete the UK Three Peaks Challenge in June 2013 to raise money for the Wales Air Ambulance.
The Three Peaks Challenge involves climbing the three highest peaks in England (Scafell Pike), Wales (Snowdon) and Scotland (Ben Nevis) usually within 24 hours.
We have had about 20 names come forward to do the challenge at present all with widely varying fitness levels and backgrounds, but all with a personal reason for wanting to take up one of the toughest challenges in the UK. Over the coming weeks I'll be asking them to share the reasons for this blog.

So, four weeks later we decide to test our fitness levels and start the training (We have only got just over four months after all!), We chose an ascent of Pen-y-Fan; A: as it was close to where we live, and B: its somewhere i expect we'll spend a lot of time training over the coming weeks so lets get familiar with it!

At 8am (and about -1°C)) seven of us met in the surprisingly quiet Story Arms car-park-Adam T-R, Mark A, Lyndon P, Craig W, Steve Mans, Vince R and Fred S. With a chill in the air and a spring in our boots we headed for the path, The skies were blue and cloud free (for now), we took the Pont ar Daf path as this is thought to be the easier path. The path was pretty icy on the way up and still very quiet, id say we passed less than a dozen people coming down, at about 600m we reached the snow level, which was only a couple of inches deep but frozen over and pretty slippery. We made it to the summit of Pen-y-Fan in about 1 hour, which was actually quite an achievement for a few of us, some because it was the first time they'd been to the top (myself included) and some because it had been harder than they thought it would. Unfortunately the clouds had rolled in and the views didn't stretch much beyond 10m. Pleased with our time we decided to head onwards to the next peak along, The Cribyn.

Getting off the summit was a bit dicey as the winds were howling and the steep trail down was very snow-covered, cloudy and slippery, but the team did well assisting and talking each other down. We then had a beautiful walk with a nice challenging scramble up the Cribyn where we were presented with stunning views of the Wye valley in one direction and all the way to the Bristol channel in the other. 

After walking the Craig Cwm Cynwyn to meet 'The Roman Road' that gracefully cuts through the mountain range we decided to head back. We took the Gwaun Perfedd route from here almost to the peak of Pen-y-Fan then cut back across towards Corn Du. Corn Du was by now bustling with climbers of all experience up here for a stroll. The descent was filled with jubilant chat between us about what to do next, what our kit was like, reasons for doing the challenge.. spirits were definitely high. 

We got stopped near the bottom by a rather frail looking 70 year old man on his ascent, he had set himself the challenge of climbing the mountain that day. Even though it looked like it would be a real struggle for him, he had a steely, determined look in his eyes, we warned him of the icy paths and the snow and wished him farewell.I hope he made it to the top because although he may not be walking the same distance we may be in a few months, to him it was a Challenge, as this will be to all of us.
A physical, personal challenge to overcome.
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