The rain turns to sleet as I walk into the clouds. Snowdon in winter takes on a second self:
wilder, emptier, more unforgiving. It feels more like the mountain of myth and sorcery on whose slopes King Arthur is said to slumber in a secret cave, disturbed only by lost sheep and curious shepherds.
In winter, the summit café is bolted shut. The steam engines of the Snowdon Mountain Railway sit cold and stationary for six months. In some remote hanging valleys, virgin snow can lie for days without human footprints. And sometimes, even on the most-visited mountain in Europe, the sight of another walker comes as a small relief.
‘Mountains are sociable places,’ says Ray Dimmock, a volunteer warden on Snowdon for the past 32 years, who materialises out of the fog. ‘Above a certain altitude everyone says hello to everyone else.’ A keen rambler whose business card reads ‘Free spirit, travellin’ man’, Ray first came to Snowdonia as a Boy Scout on the back of a lorry from the West Midlands. He moved to North Wales soon after, and still climbs Snowdon roughly three times a week, plus New Year’s Day (his birthday).
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