Spring Hut Meet, April 2026, Sam

Day 1: Cneifion Arete and Y Gribin Scramble

The weekend promised to give us an opportunity to take in more of what Snowdonia has to offer, and we certainly gave it a go by attacking the Cneifion Arete.

The Cneifion Arete is a classic, highly popular Grade 3 scramble in Snowdonia's Glyderau range (North Wales), offering a 120-meter, alpine-style ridge climb. It features a challenging, steep "Difficult" (Diff) rock climbing start, followed by exposed, airy, and easier scrambling along the crest. It would be prudent to note at this point we did not have alpine style weather and in fact battled against strong winds, snow and hail. Having climbed through the ridge we continued over Y Gribin and around Castell y Gwynt onto Glyder Fach.

Our initial plan was to then descend Bristly Ridge before exiting down towards the A5 however due to the inclement weather it was decided to avoid Bristly all together and get back to the car for heated seats and morale.

The evening meal was provided by Pete and myself as we fed the 5000 despite their only being 5 of us in the hut. The fajitas were a hit and everyone enjoyed each others company as we got to know each other.

Day 2 was thankfully much better weather wise and provided us with a fantastic day climbing the popular route of Poor Man’s Peuterey. Pete did a fantastic job of leading the route and made the ‘nose’ look a lot easier than I did!

The final pitch up the crack was particularly enjoyable for myself and was only trumped by the amazing abseil back down.

All in all it was a very successful and very rewarding weekend. I’m already looking forward to the next one!