Christmas Trip 2022

This trip report is dedicated to Joseph Shouksmith's digestive system after consuming 10 hashbrowns and a small mound of baked beans on Sunday morning. BUMC extend our thoughts and prayers out to those in his car for the 5-hour journey home.

There's lots to talk about and I’m a big waffler so without further ado let's get into the thick of it.

Friday

An MPV and a small army of cars leave Bath over the day. But don't worry, those of us leaving in the evening got about 10 minutes onto the M4 before getting stuck in an hour-long queue. Brilliant. A couple of hours go by, and the karaoke is rudely interrupted by a panicked phone call from Robin: "Do not go up the track, Alex crashed his car".

Cue to the hut. The track up from the road had been coated in a slick layer of ice and had proven difficult to conquer for most. Most, but not Jon and his 2L steed, though he insists it was all down to his superior driving skill. That was the end of any success and what followed was wheel spin and lots of pushing. This was until Alex slowly lost all control and spun into the barbed wire fence lining the track. New plan: Park on the grass verge and stumble up the track in the dark. Result: more successful than driving. Barring some confusion about the single gender room allocations that led to me accidently claiming the female only room, the rest of the evening ended with relaxation, card games and a lovely wood fire in the lounge before we all headed to bed.

Well. Not all. Let me introduce to you the chefs and possibly the MVPs of the trip. Robin, Reuben and Jon. Having taken the great sacrifice of cooking all day on Saturday, they decided that they needed an adventure, and an adventure was what they were going to get. As the rest of us were brushing our teeth, they were gearing up: hardshells went on, helmets were packed, and head-torches were charged. Snowdon was the goal and Crib Goch was the route. Sensibly, given the conditions, Jon and Reuben brought B2s and C2s. However, Robin being the punter he is strapped C1s to his trail shoes and declared them good enough, formally declaring his La Sportiva Mutants as C1 compatible (instantly inspiring me to buy a pair). Having left the hut at 1am they had ascended and descended by 5am, with nothing going wrong. Maybe they aren't as puntery as I had thought.

You may think the adventure and challenge is over for our cooks. You'd be wrong. New challenge: buy all the food. Destination: Tesco's. How hard could shopping be I hear you asking? The fatal mistake was using Scan as you Go. Racking up £250 worth of groceries ready to leave North Wales without any food for Christmas they were randomly selected for a search. I'm sure you can see where this is going. A pack a sausages apparently went unscanned. The result? A complete rescan of every single item. A gruelling 30 minutes of rescanning followed where our 3 sleep deprived heroes decided to lightly heckle the poor worker. The total came to the exact same price, so I'll leave it up to you to decide if they tried to steal or not. Finally exiting from Tesco's, Robin (not Reuben) dropped a 15 pack of eggs on the floor a mere 5 meters from the front entrance perhaps being the final nail in the coffin for their sanity. A short drive home the wet mountaineers hung their clothes to dry and went to sleep in the lounge.

Saturday

However, enough about the chefs, let's get into the bulk of the day’s activities – the walking. Following a questionable set of breakfasts (including my grey scrambled eggs), our new trip leader Adam announced that we'd be split into 3 groups: 2 longer walks and 1 shorter walk. Having left the hut only 15 minutes late (which by our standards is pretty good) we left for our adventures.

Group 1: a long walk led by new and old walking secs Ollie and Josh. Starting from Beddgelert (wherever that is), they had one goal and it was to go up. They failed. With Ollie's confidence of not needing a compass it took all of 30 minutes to go the wrong way. Having realised they were nowhere near where they thought they were they were presented with 2 options: soul destroyingly turn around and backtrack to the right path or continue on and persevere through the unknown. The executive decision was made to push through. This was widely regarded as a mistake. What resulted was, and I quote "hours of bush walking across utter wasteland" through ice and bog. Conditions were wet and the general consensus was that everyone wanted to go home. Doubt of the knowledge and experience of the leaders arose amongst the hikers and rumours of mutiny spread through the ranks. After an enthusiastic speech from Josh that was met with distraught glares and misery, they had escaped their icy hell and were on a path back to the car park. Despite them going to the wrong car park initially, the thought of being back at the hut and having a warm shower was enough to get them home. Special shout out to Ollie for managing to sprain 3 out of his 4 limbs and
fall in a stream.

Group 2: another long walk led by new and wannabe walking secs Adam and JJ. Surely it couldn't go any worse than group 1. Starting from Llanberis we embarked onto the first of many icy paths. Very slippy. Similarly to group 1, Adam led us along the wrong path, despite still insisting that it was a part of his plan, and he never makes mistakes. We continued on through similar bog and ice but unlike group 1, we quickly got back on route and the first goal was to ascent Foel Goch. Long uphill sections of foot deep snow tired the team and conditions worsened as rain turned to hail but nevertheless, we pushed through it and many snowballs were thrown, unfortunately soaking my gloves (big mistake). A group meeting was held, and it became obvious that our original plan of following the ridge around after summitting would be far too dangerous without a set of B2s, crampons and ice axes so a decision to shorten our route was made. The way down Foel Goch on the other side was icier and had even deeper snow but allowed for the most fun descent that I have ever had. JJ accidently discovered that the ice and snow acted as a perfect slide after slipping and it wasn't long before the whole group jumped and slid down on their asses. Anyone with any remaining dry layers had cemented their fate at this point. Minus Adam and JJ playing with their big white balls we headed back to the cars where people huddled for warmth in the MPV whilst eating their lunch. Tess, Mann, and I, however, were sentenced to sitting in the boot. It was time for another group decision. Another walk, a pint at the pub or go home. Majority decided to go home, whilst a few of us went to the pub and Joseph went on a little solo walk. Unfortunately, I didn't have my ID, so no pints were consumed on my end (tragic).

This brings us to the final group, the shorter walk group led by Joe Boycott and Matt Johnson. I asked Joe about how his walk went but this was after a good number of beers on his part, so I apologise for the lack of details. They set out with a single goal in mind: have a nice walk in the snow and they're the only group of the 3 to achieve their goal so congratulations! Unfortunately, a casualty was had. Joe's left knee succumbed to his old age leading to Ashraf (who's doing a PhD in pharmacy) to tell him not to take any more Paracetamol than he already had. Despite this they pushed onwards and made it to their final destination: "a typical Welsh pub" where a hearty pub lunch was had after a good morning's walk. Despite being the “shorter walk”, they were out for longer than either of the longer walks.

I just remembered that Alex and Amy went and did some winter climbing at Bristly Ridge. By all reports, it was a great day out and Amy won the unofficial snowball fight that Alex didn't take part in. Also, Alex stacked it on the approach and popped something out of somewhere? Anyways.

By now, everyone was back in the warmth and had some well needed showers. Back to the cooks, they had given themselves a generous 2 hours sleep before waking up to start prepping our Christmas meal. Cooking for 35 hungry hikers is not an easy feat, for anyone on our 2021 Christmas trip you may recall a grill fire, an oven explosion and us running out of gas. Surprisingly, everything went perfectly to plan meaning Robin's track record is improving. Note that after last year he vowed to never cook again but here we are. It's good to see that his management degree has finally gone to use, and he's managed to learn something. Dinner was declared ready, and the dining room was filled with tables and an assembly line in the kitchen was ready to serve people their grub. It became quite clear that the humble cooks had cooked too much food and it was time for seconds - not that we had a choice whether we wanted it or not. I managed to struggle through 2 complete plates of dinner leaving me stuffed through to the next day. Much better than our club Christmas meal at The Graze I might add. But that wasn't it for our Christmas meal. The brilliant minds decided to theme their desert to match with the supposed theme of the meal (Australian beach theme - big shout out to the few that actually tried) and in some strange combination of berries, meringue, mince pies and whipped cream their creation came alive. I'm not quite sure what it was (they called it an Australian Christmas Meringue Nest) but it was yummy and by the end of the assembly line, the presentation got creative leading to what can only be described as modern art. Massive shout out to Reuben to eating his upside-down desert upside down in a headstand without breaking anything - very impressive. Of course, there were seconds and thirds which I gladly indulged in.

That was it for our Christmas meal. What followed the cleaning was the evening entertainment. I'll spare the details, but highlights include a heated discussion about the number of trees in Guernsey, large quantities of wine, beer and cider drank all round, lots of card games, puzzles, pub quizzes and the cooks counting down the minutes to 10pm so that they could go to bed at a grown-up time. I'd also like to draw attention to the drying room which quickly became full of drenched layers and boots, with the humidity passing that of a rainforest and a river of water running out of the room into the corridor. Turning on the massive dehumidifier a little earlier may have helped. With a few of us opting to sleep in the lounge with the warm fire (and vague threats of shanking?).

Sunday

I certainly didn't want to get out of bed (technically the sofa), but breakfast was scheduled for 8.30 and I wasn't going to miss that. Once again, our wonderful cooks cooked us a (mostly) full English breakfast which was phenomenal. Also once again, the grey scrambled eggs made an appearance - must be something about the Welsh winter air. Also, also once again, was that there was enough food to feed most of North Wales, so seconds were not only encouraged but some of us didn't have much of a choice in the matter. Some of you may remember last year where Jon made mushrooms for Tess as she was the only vegan on the trip (I think). Unbeknownst to Jon, Tess hates mushrooms but ate them anyways. Unbeknownst to Tess, Jon had poisoned the mushrooms. I can confirm the mushrooms weren't poisoned this year and to my knowledge none of the cooking made anyone ill. (It wouldn't surprise me if it did though). We did manage to break a club record for serving food not only on time, but breakfast was 15 minutes early - almost an unheard-of feat in Mountaineering.

The morning activities once again split into 3 groups: a small walk around the Llanberis quarry, a look around some popular mountaineering shops in Llanberis and cleaning the hut. The quarry walk was much like the walks yesterday. Lots of ice, very wet and a lot of stacking it on said wet ice. Tragedy struck, however. The wind chose its victim and stole Matt Johnson's beanie, leaving his head exposed to the elements for quite possibly the first time in his life. Surely a once in a lifetime event and it’s a shame to have not seen this in person. As for the shoppers, many got to experience the likes of V12 Outdoor and the Joe Brown Shop which must have been an other-worldly experience. Maybe. I'm sure the prices must have been other-worldly too. I also heard rumours of some particularly large cinnamon swirls in an unnamed café. I, however, didn't get to experience any of this as I was privileged enough to be selected for the role of cleaning. With the aid of some Christmas EDM (trust me it's worth it) we quickly got cleaned up - me being delegated to scrub the bathrooms. Thanks for that Jon.  With the hut cleaned up we decided to have a sit down with some leftover mince pies. Highlights include Ollie having a 5-scoop cup of coffee and Amy "taking over" the hot chocolate process and letting our milk boil over onto the freshly cleaned hob.

With everyone returning from Llanberis we quickly got the cars loaded and got a quick getaway and headed back to Bath. Amy made a special request that I make a 12 Days of Christmas Trip so here it is:

On the last day of Christmas Trip, Snowdonia gave to us:

12 broken eggs,

11 trees in Guernsey,

10 hashbrowns,

9 bottles of wine,

8 boxes of mince pies,

7 hours of card games,

6 wrong directions,

5 scoops of coffee,

4 cars stuck,

3 people accused of stealing,

2 hours of sleep

and

1 amazing trip :)

Thanks all for coming and special thanks to all the drivers for risking their cars, the leaders for ensuring no one died, the 3 cooks for filling our bellies, and Claire who organised the trip before getting too ill to come.

Have a wonderful Christmas break, hope to see you all soon and good luck with any exams!

Sam Boston

Punter 22/23