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.

The recent weather, in its transition from winter to spring, saw some pretty abrupt changes. From camping in a snow drift, within two weeks i was walking with a 35litre pack, trail shoes, shorts and camping in the sun!
A few weeks back on High Street...

Bring on the Sun. Overnight at Glaslyn.

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.....

Well, I’d like to think it was. I’ve been looking at the freezing levels since the end of August when there was a forecast for Yr Wyddfa to almost freeze. Since then, I’ve managed to wild camp 600m below the only snowline we’ve had this winter, the 3rd of October. Rain during the night soon cleared any that had fallen and the severe gales prevented us reaching the summit for the first time. That’s early for snow, but that was also about it so far.

So it’s time to get all the winter gear out and make sure it’s serviceable. I suppose the most important piece of kit is your waterproofs. Yes, I’m talking for winter here and not snow. There’s going to be much more cold and wet than lovely cold and dry. So I’ve forlornly sorted my’proofs out, put a few stitches here and there on my Paramo Cascada trews that you actually can repair yourself and remain waterproof. I reckon they’re on their last legs (oh, that was a bad pun, oops) and I’m greedily eying up a pair of proper Paramo Aspira Trews. Whatever pair I do get, they will definitely not be in School Navy Blue, I’d rather lick the pavement, or go out in Gore-tex…

Second most important. Gloves. I’ll admit this is one area that always gives me a problem. I’ve got a great pair of seal skin mitts, but I can’t use poles with them as they’re bulky. The same with my Darth Vader gauntlets, they’re bombproof and an old model by Berghaus, and great for the job. Of course, they’re all useless for doing anything remotely fiddly. So I’m trying a combo of waterproof sealskins (that are pretty poor on their own for keeping your hands warm) inside the mittens. Not ideal in middling conditions, so I’ve my eyes on a pair of seal skin gloves that look warm but without the bulk.

The real winter gear, or really the snow gear is the next on the list. Ice axe and Crampons. Ice axes are quite easy to pick (nope, this one’s not intentional either) compared to other items of gear. The Grivel Munro seems to be the one everyone I walk with owns, so chances are you’ll need to personalise it! Just make sure you get one suited to a walker not a climber, and that it’s the right length. Traditionally you should hold the axe by the’head’ and the point should touch the floor – but much of the advice is now towards shorter axes. If it’s sold as a par then it’s for climbers.

Crampons are more awkward. I’ve a pair of Mountain Technology crampons, but you can get decent pairs from Grivel and Black Diamond. The most important thing is getting a pair that fit your boots (you’ll need stiff boots!) and the activity you’ll be doing. So a decent pair of flexible walker’s crampons such as the Grivel Classic 10 Point Walking Crampon will be ideal for hill walkers. Of course, your boots might well dictate your crampon choice. I’ve got a pair of Brasher winter boots that are ideal for my flexible crampons, but I did use my summer boots (Meindl Burmas) with crampons for a while as they were stiff enough to use with a crampon for the snow I was seeing in Snowdonia. Whatever you do, make sure you waterproof them. Feet can get pretty cold walking through snow, and if they’re wet as well you’ll be miserable. Decent socks help too.

Most of the more technical gear (including ice axes) are designed for ice climbing and not ideal for the walker. I’m not even going into the specifics of choosing these as your best bet is to go to a specialist store and get them to make sure the ice axe is the right length and your boots / crampon combo is correct.

Second part, Skills and other gear, will be published midweek.