A linear 4-day trek in the South Western Arenigs from Bala to Dolgellau.
A weather forecast of several sunny days, including a weekend, and the imminent easing of lockdown restrictions: just the time to escape the inevitable hordes for another visit to one of our favourite areas of old, the generally forsaken and often trackless wild Arenigs. Always a reliable plan, in four days of almost unbroken sunshine, we saw just one couple ascending Arenig Fawr in the evening of day one, thereafter nobody at all – the whole area was deserted.
Eleven years have flown by since our last backpack in this region. This time we found the large tracts of rough tangled terrain much harder, the effort intensified by the unrelenting heat and struggle to maintain a good level of hydration. Regarding the latter, we were very glad to have packed a full tube of High 5 electrolyte tabs to maintain a better salt balance:- by the end of this trip my blue top had large patches of white all over it. Designed as a slackpacking trek with time for leisurely ascents and exploration, it turned out quite the opposite.
On this trip the prevailing irritants were those fairly large biting insects, clegs I think, that left numerous itchy red lumps on the hands, wrists and lower legs. Very oddly though, despite the calm humid nights, we were not troubled by midges at all.
That looks like a tough way to get back into the backpacking groove – some seriously wild terrain out there. Rhobell Fawr and Dduallt are missing summits for me – very keen to pay that area a visit. Your summit camps always look magnificent and have always inspired me to make the effort to fit them into my wild camps although with family commitments I don’t get out as often as I’d like.
Thanks again Andy, the Arenigs are always bankable for solitude almost – or literally – all of the time, at the expense of some rough stuff.
Dduallt is really wild Wales. The route between it and Rhobell Fawr is quite well known among baggers from John Nuttall’s walk route, the main discussion being the wet and changing status of the forest ride in the middle. We actually pitched almost at the summit once (not reported on the site), quite something given the rock and tussocky cotton grass that prevails.