Nant peris (Old Llanberis) to the Layby on A498.
9.9 miles
Dom, Pete, Ian
The teams self confidence was fading fast. The Loser's battlecry of "I know we can make a top ten placing" fell upon astonished faces. It was not suprising really given the current medical condition of Take Five. Two bad backs, a badly bruised leg, four sets of damaged knees. Not a bad count. Still Loser's enthusiasm was boundless. "Come on. We can do it!". "He's doing it again" Mole Grips muttered, "Make him stop".
It took almost two minutes before Loser fouled up the navigation and took the team the wrong way, the first of many 'short cuts'. The first ascent, a long haul up to the first ridge at Elidir Fawr brought reality crashing home. Stumbles' inane chatter induced a sense of surrealism in the group of three, helping them to keep going. However it still knocked the stuffing out of everyone and set the tone for this leg of the challenge. The walk up to the ridge brings you quickly out of the valley and into the mountains. Its a great feeling but tiring when you havnt really warmed up properly. Mind you everyone seemed to be finding it hard.
"Nearly there" Loser lied, not that anyone ever believed him anymore. "No really, the summits just over there!". Everyone ignored him. The team stared down into the valley below where another group had unfortunately taken a wrong turn and was trying to make their way back up a precipitous gulley. You could almost hear everyone thinking thank god thats not us.
With the ridge cracked Mole Grips accelerated hard and the team sped off toward the peak of Y Garn. The mood changed as the going got easier and everyone made good time. The scenery opened up providing spectacular vistas over towards Tryfan and the Ogwen valley. At this point the clouds closed in and drizzle started to set in. Moods became as damp as the weather as Take Five negotiated their way up towards Glyder Fawr via a horrible scree slope. Stumbles went out of his way to demonstrate his agility by falling over the first boulder he found and bashing his shin. Sympathy came flooding in - "Come on.... Get up and stop messing around!" was the chorus as his colleagues walked past him.
The team was still forging on as they approached Glyder Fach, Mole Grips using his patented 'hip' ascent technique to conquer the succession of climbs. "I know a shortcut" cried Loser as he took the team on a pointless detour to the top of Glyder Fach, the only non check point listed. "There's the cantilever stone. Everyone gets their picture taken on that", as he walked straight past. Stumbles looked grief stricken.
The descent was a mad dash down a rocky path to the road and if you can imagine someone who's drunk and blindfolded you get an idea of what its like to do it with Stumbles. Every step was an immanent disaster. You could almost hear them warming the helicopter up.
By some miracle Take Five made it in tact and raced in for the change over. The bid for the top ten was on.
