North Wales October 1996
From ICCC
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It was the weekend that the UK caught the tail end of a hurricane and it rained all week. The man at the BBC was telling us it would rain all weekend - where else could we go but to Wales? Arriving at the hut on Friday night (just) and having beaten the two vans full of Mary's moutaineers for the best sleeping spots the talk was of the Mawddach, big water and waterfalls. Hmmm.
It rained during the night, but the morning was clear - and even sunny. Not enough water for the Mawddach - but probably enough for the Ogwen. A good 2 hours from 'The Gunbarrel' to the take-out, and then some more paddling. Sadly the Colwyn was only at 3-4 on the gauge, but the Glaslyn was still up - so we ran that. High water, but not too high to hurt you. Nice. Really nice. With two hours of daylight left we went and ran another river about an hours drive away. A fine day.
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It rained during the night. We set off for the Mawddach, but were distracted by the Glaslyn gorge (normally on a Sunday morning we are distracted by Eric's Cafe and bacon sandwiches) - it was enormous - the path on the left was underwater in places. Paddlers were turning up, looking, and then driving away. There were some large, very powerful stoppers, the 'Breaker' could be run in the centre. There were trees blocking the route immediately downstream of the breaker - no swimming there then. Three people ran it, two of them avoiding injury in the process (poor old Fuzz fractured his cheek bone).
With one member of the team looking like the elephant man we gave the Mawddach a miss, and instead went for the Lledr. It was up - with Pony y Pant falls looking almost runnable extreme river left. Gave it a miss though. This was another run with large powerful stoppers, and Dom decided he'd portage Viaduct Gorge this time. It was getting late after all (Terry Storry tells us it's only do-able at low water. Oh no - just don't be getting it wrong). To his credit, Fuzz ran the Lledr too despite his head being twice its normal size.It was almost an ideal weekend - plenty of water, hard rivers, strong team, me not getting hurt. Can't wait to do it again.
