This is part 2 of our 1 November walk, part 1 is here
The descent to the col between Cribyn and Pen y Fan was uneventful although the visibility was getting worse. At the col there was little wind and a few people had stopped for lunch. The ascent up again to Pen y Fan was icy along the path. However I was amazed to see two young guys in Army uniform literally jogging down the other way.
We reached the top of Pen y Fan and the visibility was very poor - perhaps down to 15 metres. The summit is quite flat although I knew that from pictures I had seen before the walk. However one problem was that it was hard to work out where the path was to the Cefn Cwm Llwch path. We decided to stick to our original plan which was to carry on to Corn Du.
© Copyright Phil Jolliff and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
The picture above downloaded from the Geograph website shows what Pen y Fan would look like without cloud.
We plodded on towards Corn Du following the footprints and checking our bearing by compass. There were quite a lot of people who were on the summit ridge.
© Copyright Phil Jolliff and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
As can be seen by this photo in better conditions, the path to Corn Du is very straightforward. Given the visibility we decided not to take the steep path down but headed SW on the Storey Arms path before taking a dog's leg north towards the Obelisk. Following the edge of Craig Cwm Llwch.
At around a height of 700 metres we came out below the clouds and had a view down to Llyn Cwm Llwch. There was a gale force wind blowing over the edge; though thankfully it was blowing away from the edge. A detail I failed to notice when taking this photo is the moraine behind the tarn. The moraine is the set of uneven ridges.
We then descended into the valley below Pen Milan. It was actually a relief to get out of the wind although the summit ridge had been exciting. There was the muddy path down towards the nearest road - ironically although Mrs O and I had managed to avoid slipping in the snow and ice we both slithered onto our backs on muddy slopes.
We had about 2 km to follow anlong the road back to the National Trust car park. We took 5 hours and 45 minutes in total with just a 10 minute coffee break atop Pen y Fan. Under better conditions we would have moved faster and probably spent more time resting on the summit ridge but perhaps would have taken the same amount of time in total.
Pen y Fan is a P500 Prominent Peak
