I (Hannah) was woken at 7am today as our room group was on duty but Jacob woke up even earlier due to Okly singing Olly Murs songs! We served breakfast, a delicious range including sausages, hash browns, beans, cereal and yoghurt. After breakfast we had a few minutes to freshen up shortly before we were called for a meeting in the Common Room to be allocated our groups. We were split into 4 different teams, Sunbeams, Raindrops, Hailstones and our group, Snowflakes.
We met our instructor, Mary and discussed todays activities. Then we had a short 10-minute minibus drive to the base of the mountains we were to be climbing. Along the way, everyone was quite nervous but excited about the day that lay ahead. When we reached the mountains we started our long journey by walking about a mile on a stretch of road towards the foot of our first major ascent. Everyone started out steadily and full of energy but about 5-10 minutes down the road our excitement started to fade as we started to tire very quickly. We began our ascent up Carnedd y Filiast which was 821m tall. This sounds like a lot and unfortunately it was. We felt every metre of it with a few stops for drinks and taking off/putting on jumpers but mostly we were moving at a steady pace. We passed lots of sheep along the way and climbed over loose rocks where we had a few people tripping over! At the top there was a shelter spot in which we stopped for a good 20 minutes to eat some lunch but swiftly after, we were on the move again. As quickly as we descended the first we were going up the second. This one was a little smaller (It was 812m tall) but it was more of the same thing, scrambling over boulders of rocks trying not to lose our footing and slowly struggling to walk in a straight line up the mountain side.
(The following paragraph was written by Jacob)
On our way down, our enjoyment was abruptly ended when I saw a very old woman on the horizon. Then somebody spotted her about 10 metres from us. I thought I would be polite to this elderly community member by smiling, waving and shouting “Hello”…. She waved back, lost her balance, fell down and hit her wrist on a rock and broke it. She then passed out and Mary and Mr White ran down the hill to assist her. Mary phoned the police. The officer on the end of the phone, didn’t know anything about mountains, and Mary hung up, and we had to head back along the mountainous path to get her back safely. This meant that we couldn’t continue on the last mountain but we still had fun on the way back down.
Once we arrived back at the centre we had about an hour to shower and then we were all called for dinner, macaroni cheese or beef bolognese!
The groups split up to do the evening activities and this is where we are writing this blog!
Thanks for reading!

By Hannah Moran & Jacob Goodbody