Seven of us made it to Wales for the early December meet – only to find that the cold conditions earlier in the week had gone and were replaced with somewhat milder and damp conditions- doh.
Not deterred by the damp – Paul, Rob and Mike went to do the grade 3 scramble the ridge on Carnedd y Filiast. However, low cloud and a misreading of the guideback saw them ascending a different line to that intended 'ended up climbing some loose flaky slab then a horrible damp gully followed by quite a nice slabby arête possibly the upper section of Hawkwind or Brocken Edge?'
Simon & I went for a walk/jog from the hut over the Creigiau Gleision summits and Craiglwyn back via various tarns (one with a swing) and forestry tracks. We were 
first back (slightly unusual occurrence) got the fire going and started chopping. Meanwhile Justine & Gav did a similar but lower level variant of our walk/run (sensibly deciding not to take in the summits due to a lack of waterproof trousers) – it was rather wet!
Saturday eve we sat around with a roaring fire and consumed my rather green (possibly challenging) soup (spinach, pear and Roquefort). This was followed by a great chilli from Gav (nicely spiced with hot and mild variants on offer). Then when we didn’t really need to consume anything else we moved onto mince pies, cheese & biscuits (thanks to Pauls early Christmas leftovers) and port.
On Sunday, Paul, Rob and Mike undeterred returned to find the correct scramble – and believe that they did helped by somewhat better conditions and people ahead of them on the route. They moved together roped up for protection utilising spikes and threads for runners with the odd gear placement.
– "Great scrambling with lots of options to make things easier or harder and really nice that the ridge takes you all the way to the summit, would have been even better in the dry (can confirm it is good in the dry – did it in January!).
– Got some nice views of the main Slab witch looked really good, need to go back on a sunny day and do some of the routes".
Simon & I went for a walk/jog up and down Moel Siabod – note rocks are very slippery in the wet. We even had short spells of sunshine before conditions greyed
up again. Justine & Gav also did Moel Siabod with a slightly later start. Back to the hut early, a bit more cleaning & packing and we were off early – time for Simon’s winter boot shopping in Joe browns before the drive home.
An enjoyable weekend – if not the snowy conditions we had been hoping for.
