Somehow, the snow forecast became a little academic in the last few weeks.

There was even enough a few weeks ago to dig this little snow hole at around 400m under Yr Aran. Took us a good 2 hours to get to this stage, but another hour or so would have seen us make the inside big enough to stand up in as we found the limited room at the outset made it hard work. Unfortunately, the big regret for this winter is that we hadn't the overnight gear to make us of it. GUTTED.

You may have gathered that the Walk Eryri Blog is part of the wider family of Walk Eryri sites... Other than the walking in snowdonia guides, we also run weekend hill skill courses and walking breaks.

There's some places available on our August Bank Holiday 3 day expedition. Whether you want a 3 day active holiday in the quietest surroundings, or fancy taking the first few steps into wild camping but fancy a bit of a safety net, this is a suitable weekend. Want to cut your pack weight down? We'll show how you can travel ovenight in comfort with a 5 kilo pack. There's a discount available if you decide to bring your own food and equipment (we can still advise).

Want to wake up to the following view?

Transmission ends...

p>Rest of the stuff. I carried all the gear in the OMM Villain pack. This isn’t really big enough for this sort of trip. The sleeping bag is a bit on the bulky side, and the down mat takes up the remaining space. An Alpkit Filo jacket also took up space but I couldn’t have done without it. As usual, Paramo Aspira jacket and trews were worn and performed well except for the poppers on the side of the trousers continually opening. For a £150 pair of trousers I expect perfection and will be looking to modifying the poppers with an actual old fashioned button. A fleece and yak wool hat from Nepal and sealskin waterproof gloves were enough to keep the cold away. Your hands tend to get cold using poles, and the Leki Ultralight poles have given me months of loyal service but are starting to look pretty tatty as the pole length markers are all but worn off. Meindl Burma boots do the job well for this sort of walk and as it was dry didn’t freeze solid overnight like last time. Merino wool warm socks with some thinnish outer walking socks kept my feet warm enough. I don’t think trail shoes would have been wise, the ground being frozen solid meant I twisted my ankles many times during the trip and clambering over icy boulders I could stabilise myself by jamming a foot between rocks often up to my ankles.

Nothing but a decent head torch will suffice for me, and the Petzl Myo3 is a good balance of weight and performance. It’s good enough for night walking, so it’s a vital piece of hill kit for winter day walks where ending the walk in the dark is often the norm. It also takes AA batteries, which any gear I take must also take. That means I can take my camera batteries if need be and use them in my head torch or GPS. In winter I carry a set of Lithium batteries as well as they don’t get affected by the cold.

A Nokia N95 was useful as an MP3 player, radio and for a bit of web browsing. On my last wild camp I managed to post on the blog with it. Soon I’ll be getting an Asus EEE 901 which may be my luxury item on summer wild camps (review soon). I always use my Garmin GPSmap 76c to log the walk and it also gives a much quicker idea if we’re off path or not. If they don’t match up, then the map is straight out. The Fuji Finepix S9600 is bulky but I wouldn’t go on a trip like this without being able to take a decent photographic record.

What I didn’t use. Paramo mountain top – great fleece that’s also a base layer so counted as spare fleece and layer. First aid kit with whistle– few odds and sods only. Spare batteries weren’t used, but essential. Sunglasses were taken, but the sun wasn’t quite strong enough. I also had sealskin mittens and Paramo long johns that I just didn’t need, but I was glad that they were.

What I didn’t take, but wished I had? I could have done with a Complan for breakfast. I’d not been able to get to a shop to buy this over the busy holiday period and suffered a bit on the second day. One of these would have made a nice pudding in the evening as the meal left me craving something sweet but not chocolate. A windproof would have been my top of choice on the warmer second day if I’d been able to fit it in my pack! Definitely a better set of headphones for my Nokia and a decent portable radio as the N95 has an atrociously poor battery life. I can’t replace it with an MP3 player as I’m yet to see a decent one that takes AA batteries and they all require wall sockets to charge and proclaim is as a useful feature. Other than that, I was happy that the gear did the job well and that there was minimal dead wood. The rucksack needs to be larger for a longer trip in similar conditions though. Weight wise you could drop this down a kilo or so with a lighter bag, but for a significant price. The OMM Villain isn’t the lightest pack either, but it’s comfortable and I’d stick to this rather than go completely minimal. I think if I’d have cut weight down with most of the other gear then I’d have lost comfort at best or at worst I’d have had the wrong gear for the conditions at hand and suffered badly.

A rough estimate is that the pack weight was somewhere in the region of 8 kilos without counting the camera (non-essential) or the poles (as they’re’worn’). Of course, the rest of the worn gear adds a lot of weight as does the food – but on the net pack weights are usually stated without consumables (gas, water, food) or items worn (inc boots). The full weight of my gear would have been much higher, and this’Skin out’ weight included my waterproofs. In seeking lower weights I cannot see how any lighter gear would have performed as good as the Paramo, which at this time of year really does count as a lightweight choice. Aspira Trousers (850g) and the Jacket (840g) count as an insulation and a waterproof layer for the entire body, worn just with decent baselayers are enough for walking in this weather, you know you’ll be dry and warm. I might have got away with lighter clothing but had the weather changed I might not (definitely on the Saturday, normal walking trews and a windproof would have been OK). So it depends how much risks you like to take! You might go up Snowdon in January with t-shirts and flip flops and survive, it doesn’t mean it was a wise course of action.

Some have emailed asking what gear you can use for a winter wildcamp. Here’s my selection of gear. I’ve split it into two posts - one for the ‘big 3’ of shelter, sleep and cooking and the other for the rest of the stuff.

Freezing conditions were expected and the gear below kept me comfortable all night. There was a gusty wind that lasted till midnight, must have been caused by the pass between Rhinog Fach and Y Llethr as it certainly wasn’t forecast. The upside of this was that while wind chill was extremely bad, the temperature didn’t seem to drop as low as we expected.

Tent – Terra Nova Laser (1300g). Ideal weight to space ratio. The porch is just huge on this, but so is the space inside. I could put all my gear in the inner tent to keep them from frost and only kept my water and stove here. The awful carbon fibre pegs were just not up to the job of use on frozen ground and most were broken on removal. Either the copper coloured point remained in the ground on pulling, or the yellow cap on top came off making it impossible to remove. Titanium pegs I had with me were much more suitable, but prone to bend on removal. The tent does tend to be pretty flappy in the wind and despite many pitches, it can still refuse to pitch taut when the ground isn’t perfectly even.

Laser Competition on the Left, full sized Laser on the right.

Sleeping – Old Mountain Equipment Classic Dragon 750 (1400g or so), Exped Down Mat (1000g) and Rab Survival Zone bivvy (350g). The sleeping bag is my extreme weather sac and compares in weight/performance to something like the AlpKit Alpine Dream sac. Stated to be good to -12c it was up to the job if a little heavy. A pipe dream 1000 by Alpkit would be nice and light at 1150g and £150, being good to -17c (with other offerings of similar weight to temperature being much more expensive) but probably not worth the investment with the use it’d get under typical Snowdonia conditions and being only a couple of hundred grams lighter.

The Exped Down mat is heavy and bulky but provides a warm and comfortable night’s sleep. I’ve a ¾ length summer synthetic version (imported from the States and I forget the make!) that’s a paltry 450g but just not cut out for the winter unless you want your feet dangling over the end.

Finally, the bivvy bag might seem like overkill but it does provide an extra layer on the bag that must add a degree or two, and certainly protects the down from any condensation or moisture that’s present in the tent. Bit of a belt and braces approach for a one nighter, but a very wise precaution if you’re out for longer.

Food and Drink – MSR Titanium Kettle (120g), Pocket Rocket (85g) and titanium KFS set (life venture I think, and around 50g). Snow peak Ti mug at 70g and my’rice pouch’. The kettle needs little explanation, it does the job at a great weight but you pay for it. It hold’s 850ml, so has a practical volume of over 750ml. I’ve got a custom made pot cosy for mine, so you can keep the extra water hot for quite a while. The warm water was essential to keep my gas canister from freezing solid. Either I’d put the canister on top of the warm lid, or place it in the lukewarm water to defrost the canister. I reckon that a mild warming of the canister should be OK, but it’s probably one of those’don’t try it at home’ tricks and I’d not recommend it. The pocket rocket is a super piece of kit at a light weight and the KFS set I take in it’s entirety. Some people recommend just a spoon, but I’d rather eat noodles with a pair of tent pegs than try it with a spoon. The fork is usually used, and the knife is useful for spreading things onto oatcakes.

On a morning like this, it’s better to stay in the sleeping bag!

A mug is likewise a bit of a luxury – you can use the kettle for that – but I like to have a drink while my meal’s cooking. This was almost essential on this trip to help warm me up. I had 4 platypus pouches as well – that’s one for a litre of flavoured drinks and then a 1l and a 2l bladder so that I’d have enough water to last me the night. Word of warning though – don’t leave them full of water overnight as they’ll freeze and you’ll end up with 2 kilos of ice you’ll need to carry out! I filled my kettle with water instead and it only had a thin layer of ice by morning (the pot cosy helped this).

My’rice pouch’ cooks proper noodles a treat. I mean the egg noodles, not the nasty 9p stuff that can’t be made of anything decent for that price (add to the 9p the pack of indigestion tablets that inevitably follow and they’re not so cheap for me). These noodles were my carbs for the’look what we found’ gourmet meatballs in tomato sauce pouch. These cost £2.50 each, but are still cheaper than camping food. What surprised me was how tasty they were. I’ve had similar food eating out and you never expect that from convenience food. Compare them to a wayfarers and for a bit more money you get a complete meal, but that includes the rice/pasta. With this you get a full meal, with the addition of a dry component makes it the ideal balance between weight / palatability / calorific content. I normally take a home made curry in a freezer bag for an overnighter which also ticks all the boxes.

The rest of the edibles were chocolate (usually Green and Blacks quality stuff or Lindt if I want milk chocolate) which can be melted into instant hot chocolate for a calorie rich meal in a mug! What has to be emphasised in this weather is that calories are essential to keep you warm. If I feel cold, I drink and eat a bit more. This is the only time I tend to eat pork pies, the buffet varieties packing in 300 calories of pure fat and protein. Of course, jelly babies bolster this when you need a bit more oomph on that steep uphill.

Sugar rush...mmmm.....

Winter Skills.

Of course, it should go without saying that you’ll need to know how to use the above gear properly! Walking in crampons and making proper use of the ice axe are both essential skills. Get a mate to show you, join a club or pay for a course. If you’re going to pay for it, I’d go to Scotland where you’re much more likely to see some snow. Snow transforms summer routes. Something that’s easy in summer might be a mountaineering challenge needing some ropes and stuff in winter.

Beware of Cornices!

Snow also obliterates landmarks, so your navigation skills need to be up to scratch. Take a GPS for a’belt and braces’ approach. I find a quick look at the GPS when you’re not sure a good morale booster and more importantly, minimises the time you’re stopped and getting cold. Snow might also cover rivers, and you could well find yourself falling through. This could hurt your pride, or be much more serious. Knowing where you are can minimise the chance of this happening. Snow filled hollows are the same, you’re guaranteed to find yourself wading through these at some point. The usual method of discovery is sinking up to your waist in it. These are energy sapping and best avoided, but easier said than done.

Avalanche risk is another thing! This is rare outside Scotland, but still a hazard to be aware of. SAIS is useful information about the condition of the snow.

Rest of the stuff. Finally, the rest of your gear should be the same as your summer stuff. Rucksack might be a bit larger to take the warmer clothing you’ll need. I find that a fleece (or two) and a thick insulator with a hat thrown in for good measure is more than enough. If you don’t use the Paramo system, you’ll probably need some warm leggings under your trousers, and decent over trews too. Same goes for your upper body, where a windproof over a fleece – or even a windproof with a fleece lining might be ideal out of the rain. Spare socks, especially if you’ve got planned river crossings, should be regarded as essential. A flask is almost a must, take two and you can have soup and coffee. Head torches should be carried as emergency equipment in summer anyway, but are essential in winter. If there’s snow and sun, sunglasses are vital. You can easily suffer mild snow blindness without them. If it’s windy and snowing then a pair of goggles will be most welcome, even if they do make you look like Bender off Futurama.

I’ve mentioned a flask, but one of the most overlooked things in winter is water. You still need to drink, but I know I tend to dehydrate on winter walks quite easily. You’ll be expending much more energy winter walking than the same walk in fine summer conditions (unless it’s too hot). Fighting the wind and wading through snow is tiring work, so you’ll need to make sure you’ve got plenty of high calorie food. Protein is apparently good as it can help keep you warm. I take plenty of chocolate (but the first time you bite into a frozen Yorkie bar you’ll realise that it’s not the best choice for winter) and goodies like pies and jelly babies. Whatever you eat, you’ll likely burn off anyway.

Safety equipment will then include a first aid kit and a bivvy bag. I take a proper RAB Bivvy as opposed to the orange bag, and I’d probably take a light sleeping bag (Alpkit half length Pipedream 200, or the full length 400) if I was crossing anything large in Scotland such as the Cairngorms. I usually go up a mountain with the ability to survive overnight. In summer that would involve very little extra equipment but sheltering miserably in my bivvy bag would not be a comfortable night, but one I’d survive. Winter would mean the extra bits of gear mentioned above. Of course, you could always build a snow hole!

Snow hole on the ‘Ben’.

One thing that is definatley not obvious to most is that batteries will die in the cold. If you do take spares for your gadgets (including essentials like your torches and GPS) then make sure they’re Lithium ones as they’re not affected by the cold. Unfortunately, there’s no option for rechargeable lithiums that i’m aware of so you have to use disposable batteries.

All you need now is some snow. So keep an eye out on Snow Forecast and with any luck, Snowdonia might live up to its name some time before Christmas. Of course, they typical snow pattern recently has been snow followed by rain and melting in the next few days. The only way I know I’m going to see some decent snow this year is to go up to Scotland at the end of February or early March.

Coming soon... Winter Camping.... If we get some snow...