I left Manchester in the morning but there was a big traffic jam that I got stuck in so I did not get to the trail start until almost 4 pm. I know that´s late but I thought I can run up to the top and down again pretty fast. The mountain is just 978 m and I did Snowdon in under 3 hours up and down the day before. Well… Let me just say that in the beginning it was not a problem. There was a trail and I hiked it as fast as I could. Meeting other that where coming down from the mountain at the same time.

And just before I took this picture I met the last person who advised me to go back down again. He said it will be dark soon and I thought no worries I have my headlamp and there is a trail so I kept going. Just to realise the trail soon was gone and the last 1/3 of the way up to the top was like someone just spilled rocks all over the mountain. To navigate there was piles of rocks but it was not only getting dark, it was a lot of fog too. So I could barley see anything with my headlamp shining into the fog just creating a white wall for me. I tried to see the piles of rock against the darker and darker sky to navigate between them and I could barley manage but somehow I did!

Sorry for the bad photos here, I only had my cell phone with me and it was completely dark when I got up to the summit. But as you can see there is a summit stone on top of the mountain! Ok so made it up. Now I had to get down. I started walking down the way I came but soon I got lost. It was so dark and foggy now that there was no chance to see the piles of rock. When you walk down you can´t see them against the sky either so I ended up somewhere where I did not come up from. I could not find my way back to the right trail at all. I did not panic over this fact. I knew I would get down somehow because even if it was dark weather was ok and it´s not a technical difficult mountain. So I used google maps to see where I was and where I parked the car and navigated in the dark towards it. I did not even walk on a trail because there was none. Just in the right direction. And about two hours later I ended up on the trail I came from. It was nice to have found that again!

Walked back to the car, happy that I made it down safe even if it was dark and I got lost for a while. I learned a lot from this experience!

Mountain no 25