Welsh Winter
Mountaineering

In winter the Welsh mountains can often have snow and ice for some weeks, and it’s great to profit from the conditions when they arrive. Ideally it helps if you keep an eye on the weather forecast, and are able to get away at short notice. Usually any prolonged cold snaps with snow will give reasonable conditions, and even some great adventures can be had in quite marginal conditions in fact.

The scale of the Welsh mountains are one of their best assets – the summits are not too far from the valley so that getting up into interesting terrain with axe and crampons is fairly straightforward and short compared to Scotland. This makes Wales in winter a perfect place to learn about winter mountaineering, or grab quick winter hit at short notice.

When cold conditions are more consistent, North Wales can boast some of the most wonderful winter climbs in Britain – there are some great snow gullies of all levels of difficulty, and ice climbs galore..so when the temperature drops in the winter start thinking about climbing Welsh mixed routes or ice climbing – it’s all the better for being quite rare and there are some great classic routes to enjoy.

On some occasions it may be possible to explore Snowdonia on skis. We normally manage to do this at least once a year, but every so often really snowy conditions come along and stick around, enabling some fine little ski tours to be enjoyed.