Snowy Circular above Coed y Brenin 7th of April

After discussing the Coast to Coast with Carwyn and some of his research, he suggested we should go on a ride similar to that we'll be facing on the trip itself. With this in mind, Carwyn made a gpx circular route starting from Coed y Brenin but avoiding the mormal tracks established in the centre and going up into the mountains and country allong fire roads, tracks and bridleways for 30 miles

Here's a few photos from early in the trip.

LLun gan Carwyn - Picture from Carwyn

The start of the trip went very well, we kept a good pace and we were getting used to navigating with our gps devices. Cawryn was using his Garmin and I was using my iphone with the Viewranger app. I'm planning on writing on the blog about the GPS app that I'm hoping to use for the Coast to Coast. 

We came accross some snow early on and here's a video of me having a go at riding through it. I think ill need some better tyres in this instance I think! 

After some more riding, we came across our first snow drift. You can see how deep the snow was after almost burying a nearby gate and swallowed my legs as you can see below :- 

 

After some lunch.. we set off and quickly reached a path that was covered in snow. Believing that the snow wouldn't be too bad, we set off up the snow as the path would later join a forest which we believed would be clear. What a mistake this was! After slogging for over an hour to get to the head of the path, where it crossed a stream to the forest, with the snow up to our knees for most of the way.. there was as much snow in the forest as there was outside it! As you can see from the pictures below.. the snow was thick enough to stand the bikes in! 

Snow standing bikes 

By now, we'd lost feeling in our feet, low energy and even less patience so we agreed to turn around to find another way. Once back down from the snowy path, the route went well.. loosing about 10 miles from the original path, but it turned out to be a good day where we learned a lot about navigation and reading the environment. One things for certain.. we'll be back when the snow's left!

Here's the details of the route:-