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brecon beacons

snowboarding Bannau Sir Gaer

By Mountain-Forecast.com

January 31^st, 2019

Leaving rush hour behind...

Cardiff, minus 2°C and the satnav says expect a 12 minute delay due to heavy traffic. After that, a beautiful morning heading west along the M4 to meet friends for breakfast in the Red Lion, Llangadog. Impressive anvil clouds streaked with snow falling over the hills to the north give a clue to the day's outlook.

up to llyn y fan

A few extra kilometers walking at the start due to icy roads. Thanks to YHA Llanddeusant for letting us park up there. An easy trudge up the track to the small glacial lake Llyn y Fan Fach under blue skies.

up onto the ridge

Climbing the ridge up the northern face of the Carmarthen Fans behind the lake gives good views of as the Sandstone ridge sweeps eastwards toward our route and the peaks of Picws Du and Fan Brycheiniog (802.5 m/2,633 ft). Deeper wind-blown snow and decreasing visibility made the going somewhat sweaty.

panorama from picws du

After just over two hours walking we reached the top of Picws Du (749m) and the scenery opened up to give some of the best views of the National Park we could remember. It didn't last long as more snow showers arrived and visibility dropped suddenly to a few tens of metres. Time to put on the boards and ride down to a gully for some lunch.

We planned to descend on snowboards from a spur on the ridge of Fan Foel, however poor visibility and steep cliffs made the choice of route that seemed so obvious from the bottom a tricky one. After consulting the OS map we'd walked too far along (see track on map below).

The snow at higher elevations was good, but predictably wetter lower down - giving way to classic Beacons bog conditions near the bottom. There's so much potential for epic lines in this part of the world - if only a decent snow base existed and it could stay cold for more than a few days!

An excellent day out and in contrast to nearby Pen y Fan that would have been packed with day-trippers, we saw nobody. Allow around five hours for the round trip (less if you park at the bottom of Llyn y Fan track) and go prepared for rapidly changing conditions (and a much longer walk out if you descend too far east). Know your weather forecast!