JANUARY 2025 · ADVENTURE

Bannau Brycheiniog - New Year Cribyn Camp

Bannau Brycheiniog, Wales

Pen y Fan gets all the attention. It's the highest point in the Beacons, it's on the list, it's where people go. On a winter weekend it looks like a queue outside a shop — a long column of people in varying states of preparedness, moving upward.

Cribyn is the next ridge along. 795 metres, slightly overlooked, technically less impressive by about ninety metres. On the day I went up, it was also significantly less populated.

Snowy mountain slope with ice formations and sparse dark rocks, Cribyn ridge — The ridge in January

— The overlooked summit

This was the first camp of 2025. The forecast was sub-zero and it delivered, but what the forecast didn't mention was that this particular spot on the ridge is a wind tunnel. It felt colder than the numbers said. The tent held. I found the flattest piece of ground I could, got in early, and lay there listening to the wind do its worst from the inside of a sleeping bag rated for temperatures I wasn't quite experiencing.

I walked through it in about thirty seconds and said nothing.
Cribyn — January 2025

Olive tent pitched on snow-covered plateau with distant snowy peaks, Bannau Brycheiniog — Three tents spread across the ridge

— Wind tunnel

Two other tents appeared at sunset. I'd had the ridge to myself for an hour and then there were three of us, spread out in a loose cluster, none of us acknowledging the others, all of us watching the same sky go dark over the same ground.

I had the best camp sleep I've ever had. I can't fully explain this. The cold should have been a problem; the wind should have been a problem. Neither was. I woke up before light feeling like I'd actually rested.

Icicles hanging from grass and moss tufts in frozen moorland close-up — Ice forming at the margins

— Ice on the path

The morning was ice. The path off the ridge had glazed overnight, properly, the kind where each step requires a decision. I had ice spikes with me. I watched people descend without them. One section, maybe fifty metres, was almost flat but angled just enough that it had become a slow-motion slide in the wrong direction. A queue had formed at the top. People were going in pairs, holding each other, moving sideways like crabs.

I walked through it in about thirty seconds and said nothing.

Snow-covered mountain ridges with exposed rocky outcrops, winter landscape — The central ridge, Beacons in winter

— The robin

At the bottom a robin was sitting on a frost-covered fence post in the mist, completely unbothered. The mountain behind it had almost entirely disappeared into low cloud. I took the shot.