The car park at pen y pass where you can walk several routes up Snowdon mountain.
The first of two lakes on the way to the summit.
Having a Soup-er time with my homemade Vegi Soup after the first 2-3 miles.
Still feelin' the love as bridge buddies at this point as our legs hadn't started to hurt ;-)
Debs admires the ruins of one of the old miners' cabins.
The real climb starts, and I'm not too sure how popular I was at this point as I told Debs that we were only 2/3 of the way up, with much steeper sections to come.
We reached the second lake Glaslyn and the main peak was ahead.
Snowdon, near the peak and above the clouds as they rolled in.
Snowdon starting to look a little like Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings ;-)
We reach the Snowdon's peak marker and I get a reluctant selfie taken... it was freezing by this point ;-)
I was inspired by thisismylife's recent blogging challenge on @liketu, 'The 30 Pictures 30 Stories Challenge'.
@thisismylife was originally inspired by rubencress '30 day not-so ordinary ordinary items challenge' and when I checked out both challenges I did find them a great way to encourage daily posting on hive.
However, all good things come to an end, this is my thirtieth and final post in the series. I would like to give a special shout-out and thank you to @thisismylife for reading/commenting on many of my blogs & also to @elmerlin who created @liketu for personally voting many of my posts in the series, as well as giving many of them a boost with the official liketu account.
This meant a lot to me to feel supported writing long-ish form content 😂 on this new hive front end @liketu. I wish @elmerlin and @liketu all the luck in the world bringing new and diverse people to hive blockchain.
As this is my final post in the series it feels a little redundant repeating the challenge rules, but I guess some people might want to continue it on after me as I know @thisismylife has, although she has moderated their round two a little.
The only stipulations are that you post one picture daily with a personal story for 30 days.
Write your story/anecdote to the best of your ability, and use the tag #30stories and/or the #notsoordinary tag if you're following rubencress' challenge. It is also advised to use the #challenge tag.
As I am a professional writer outside of hive blockchain and only dabble as an amateur photographer, I thought I would follow thisismylife's challenge format, relating some stories and anecdotes about my strange life.
It Takes One Step to Start Climbing a Mountain.
The title of this post doesn't need any attribution because that is an @raj808 original. I scoured the internet to double-check that my little pearl of wisdom was an original, and as much as anything can be, it is original.
All writing comes inspired by the clay formed by generations before them, but that is the job of a writer - to remake and reshape the clay into something unique or at least measurably different 😂
As to other mountain climbing quotes:
"He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary."
- Friedrich Neitszche
One of my favourites.
Mountains are climbed one step at a time.
- Tracey Hancock
Tracy Hancock’s quote is very similar to mine in quality and meaning.
“The hardest mountain to climb is the one within”.
- J. Lynn
Which I love because as I will talk more about later in this blog - and one of my favourite authors Jack Kerouac writes so succinctly about - ascending a mountain is a journey both physical and mental.
Speaking of which...
“In the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddam mountain.”
- Jack Kerouac
...and finally, I love this by Hunter S Thompson, as you most definitely need a touch of madness in your soul to want to climb mountains.
“You won’t find reasonable men at the top of tall mountains”
- Hunter S Thompson
I can't claim any great mountaineering feats. I haven't done a Wim Hof and scaled Kilimanjaro wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and an iron will.
I have climbed Snowdon many times in my youth, Ben Nevis in Scotland plus many of the peaks in the Lake District and the Peak District. But these are so far back in memory they are like a hazy picture, like a Monet impressionist's vision of rolling boulder-strewn hillsides stretching endlessly into depths of cloud and mist.
Memories of summer days, midge-bitten traipsing long paths leading through golden grass blushing summer’s heat before the haymaking, broken in places by indigo heather crested with their brief blooms covered in appreciative bees.
But these are just memories; now is now, which is very much what time in the mountains is about. There is a natural meditation in climbing a mountain, one foot in front of another, aware of your surroundings in case of danger, yet still... one foot in front of the other.
This is how you climb a mountain.
This is also how Buddhist monks describe and practice walking meditation.
So, we set out that day, me and my friend Debs, climbing one foot in front of another until we reached the first of Snowdon's two lakes where we stopped for soup (as seen in pic 3) and the enormity of the task struck us a little (given that we were both in our mid-thirties and quite out of shape).
I remember discussing with Debs the book The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac which had inspired me to meditate as well as inspiring in me a great respect for the mountains, and the fact that it is an undertaking of both mind and matter.
Climbing a mountain is a journey of both the physical and the soul.
As we struggled on we both felt this reality in silence. I and Debs were two university friends who hadn’t seen each other in over five years, yet after a certain amount of time a very comfortable silence descended.
Not to say that we didn’t talk, we had many conversations, but in-between them there were moments where we both found ourselves lost in the landscape, and instinctually knew not to disturb the other’s peace.
This is when the mountain speaks, and if you listen, it imparts wisdom through stone, air, and water. It seems insane, but it is true!
Finally we reached the harder climbs, as pictured in pics 6 and 8, and this was the section I most enjoyed. I find a certain mad ecstatic joy when you get high enough up a mountain that what you see seems impossible to the eye.
The immense distances you can see, and as it was a sunny day we got a real feel of the true majesty of the mountain (especially in pic 8 and 9) nearing the peak.
Once we reached the top we did have a small picnic, but by this time mist and cloud had descended upon the peak and it was quite cold.
We hastily wolfed our food down and started our decent, in which I tried to teach Debs the somewhat insane method of Scree running. Although it can get you down the mountain quicker, it is pretty dangerous and it is one of those personal choice things where you have to seriously consider how spatially aware you are as a person.
I used to be a skateboarder in my younger days, so I'm quite confident about that type of stuff so I was off like a mountain goat at first. But you can break ankles, legs wrists and arms scree running if you get it wrong, so after a decent attempt Debs told me it wasn't for her and I slowed down to a normal pace.
One thing we both agreed upon when we spoke the next day was that we both needed to get back to the gym, because after the drive home and a night's sleep it felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my thighs.
The moral of this story being... if you're over thirty five years of age, make sure you're in decent physical shape before climbing England’s highest mountain.
Thanks for reading 🌿
All photos and media design used in this post are my own.
Camera: Samsung S7 Smart Phone.
To see me perform my poetry on-screen please visit my YouTube channel Mainly Poetry.
To hear more of my poetry please visit my SoundCloud channel Mainly Poetry.
To read more in the 30 Pictures 30 Stories Challenge series, check out Days 21 -29.
Day 29 - Healthy Thai Food vs A Dirty Big Yorkshire Pud With Mash
Day 27 – Tuesday is the New Saturday (Poetry and Beer)
Day 26 – How I Found Hope in a Poem
Day 25 – A Heavenly Picnic (Paddington Meadows)
Day 23 – Liverpool Anglican Cathedral Altar (Selective Colour Photography #4)
Day 22 – Time for a Healthy Wrap (Biggie Smalls Style)
Day 21 – St Georges Hall (Selective Colour Photography #3)
[//]:# (!pinmapple 53.06857 lat -4.07622 long Snowdon Climb (two unfit people lol) d3scr)
