The forecast for the weekend of April 1-3 promised sun, rain and snow and freezing temperatures at night. All of these came to pass but didn’t prevent the MTB trip from being declared a great success.
Talking of snow and cold, Duncan and his family took an “interesting” decision to enjoy the early spring weather by camping - only to wake up to ice coating their tent!
All in all a great weekend, with an excellent variety of riding. Many thanks to Gwyn for organising and booking the restaurants.
The form of the trip, as in past years, was that we each organised our own accommodation in or around Dolgellau, which is near the south of the Snowdonia National Park. Close by is the original mountain bike park, Coed Y Brenin, which has a range of man-made trails of various levels of technical challenge threading the forest and hills. Riding there would be the core of the weekend, on Saturday. 13 riders tackled “The Beast”, which is basically the two main Red trails put back to back to form a loop which although only 21 miles long, includes 2,800’ of climbing. However this plan was slightly amended by Mat, who was under instructions to complete this loop before lunch in order that he could take over care duties for 5 month old baby Isla, in order that Gilly could get out and ride in the afternoon! Some of the group then joined Gilly to make a tough, long day with 4,600’/1400m climbing.
On Friday, many of the riders had enjoyed the uplift facilities at Antur Stiniog which has a set of downhill trails built in an old slate quarry. Meanwhile, Andrew (Big Daddy) Lewis set off for a solo attack on Snowdon - his sixth - climbing to the 1085m summit in an impressive 1:17 hours, in spite of the snow and cold at the top
Finally on Sunday, some riders returned to Coed Y Brenin while 4 of us rode up (or in my case pushed a bike up) Cadair Idris, a popular walking mountain just outside Dolgellau. There are various paths up but the only one available to bikers is a bridleway which rises 800m in 8km, so an average of 10%. It is rideable for a large proportion but the higher levels have sections of scree (rideable downhill) and then the very top is a carry. The descent however is a tremendous blast, only interrupted by Stu smashing his derailleur on a rock. Surprisingly he managed to twist it straight with some pliers, to enable him to actually pedal on the return to the cars.