It was an early start for myself and non-HAM mate Ed who would be accompanying me on this outing. Left the QTH at 0620 arriving at 0740 at the parking spot. The mission for the day was GW/NW-024 and then possibly GW/NW-020, although there was a cut off of having to be back by 1630. We thought this could possibly be just about “doable” if we were quick. However, the ground conditions and having a professional camera man with his iphone with you, had other ideas! 
A relative stop, start approach to the walk for the views and photo opportunities ensued, with the odd “why aren’t we up there, looks ace today” from Ed (pointing to Yr Wyddra (Snowdon), to which I reply “done that this year, no points on offer and anyway this is the Nantlle ridge, a classic you know!” or so the guide book says An hour late for the alerted QRV, mainly due to the slow walking conditions and both if us having to stop to take phone calls that couldn’t be avoided. During my phone call, which was to a nurse, so relatively formal I could see Ed was laughing. At the end of the call, I enquired as to what Ed was laughing about. Turns out that that I may have been saying “over” between sentences with the nurse and there may have been a “73” in there as well! Opps! I put that down to the fact that I’d just had a QSO with John GW0TQE/P and John GW4ZPL was calling on the Radio as I was on the phone and not that I’m an idiot! Hmmm.Any how I decided to setup just down from the summit, all was going well after a mug of hot tomato chilli soup and a quick deployment of the EFHW MW0SAW special, with my little quicker deployment mod of course! That was until I went to connect the external battery to the FT 817ND. What could go wrong, I mean I’d only changed over from the bag that I normally use to hold all my radio kit that morning? Well, I’ll tell you what did go wrong, I’d forgot the XT90 -Anderson power pole patch lead! I think I was more miffed at this point of the fact that I’d had been and would be carrying around 600g of dead weight, more than I would now be operating at 2.5 watts. I know you can push it to 5 watts on the internal battery, but when I’ve done that in the past, it only lasts around 30 mins. The temp at this point was -6 degrees C, so I wasn’t sure of the 30 mins and in my mind the second summit was still on at this point.So QRP 2.5 watts it was. Decided to put the call out on 40m and was happy to get the calls coming in. 10 minutes and 13 in the log later, my pal Ed was certainly ready to go, I know this due to the impression of Rocky Balboa he was doing on the ridge and the repeated mention of how cold he was!As it was Ed’s first time out with crampons and an ice axe, I thought I would introduce him to a Bothy Bag. In this case a two-person Bothy if you believe that advertising lie! With the two of use squeezed into the bothy it got toasty pretty quick, and very apparent that someone had eaten garlic the night before, and I don’t mind saying that it wasn’t me!If you’re going to buy a Terra Nova Bothy 2, they’re really a one-person bothy, unless you’re both under 5ft and very close to the person who is likely to get in there with you, I’d go bigger!So, with all the kit packed away and a quick time check, there was no way we would make the second summit and I wasn’t convinced that my battery would last much more anyway, we decided to make our way down. It was crampons on for this section the route, which was a nice intro for Ed into crampon use and the dangers of snow balling up on the crampons, which was really bad on this route back down.The route back down through Beddgelert Forest was quite nice, although there has been a lot of clear felling going on it would seem.All in all, a nice route and a nice day for it.73 Rich2W0LWF
