GW/SW-001 - Pen y Fan, 886m, 8 points.
4th September 2008 - 2W0KPO
Went up Pen y Fan today, first time for me.
The day started at 5 am at home and after the drive down to South Wales with odd rain shower I arrived at SN 987 199, good size car park with toilets. Free parking as well.
I walked through the woods to go over the wood bridge and follow up the well maintained path (well it was in places) in quite good weather, accompanied by 4 Gurkahs for a short while, they were impressed with the weight of my pleasure rucksack considering I was just out for a walk, I was even more impressed with their lead filled rucksacks and the fact they had just spent the night somewhere on the east flank of Fan Fawr. They still have to more nights rough as well, rough being the right word!
Buy the time I got to Bwlch Duwynt the weather had changed and I was now in 50 ft visibility and driving heavy rain, good job there is a path to follow. I did detour over the top of Corn Du as you do, not that I saw much but it's another summit to add to my list of summits done.
I arrived on the summit of Pen y Fan, horrendous conditions, no visibility and heavy rain still lashing the summit. No stone built shelter this time. I decided to set up my mountain shelter first to get out of the wind and rain rather than expose the FT-817 to the elements. Up went the beam horizontal 2m ssb and as I approached the BNC on the radio sparks were flying, static rain!
A quick photo of the summit cairn before the clouds came back
The views over the mountains were stunning today. Taken from near the drop off looking north from the summit!
Not a chance I thought and promptly plugged in the rubber duck, to see what I might get… and as I guessed not a dickey bird. I called for a while on 2m ssb, but with no alert up I soon realised I stood no chance. Oh well FM works for EYP on a rubber duck I thought, so as much as I hate to do it and because the static rain was still going strong I had no option…
And out of the noise popped up Frank, G3RMD… to give me a report and my spirits were lifted, a few more calls on FM gave me another contact from Phil, GW0IRT and then it all dried up. I kept calling but nothing.
Right I thought I try that beam again, the rain had eased, woo hoo, no static, Lots of CQ calls on SSB this time and nothing… then just as I was getting the phone out for those emergency calls to stations I know, up came Roger, G0TRB one more contact and I was home free but again nothing, so onto the phone to get my last contact lined up Bruce, G7PAL
That’s it, 4 contacts I thought, time to ditch SOTA and get on with the walk to Fan y Big. No such luck.
Just as I was packing up I was accosted by 4 polish chaps, all very wet and very lost. Not a map or compass between them. One of the young lads had got very cold and wet and they noticed my shelter. They asked if they could use it while they waited for Mountain Rescue, they said they had called them. Who knows what they had told MR as to their location and god knows how MR would have found them as they kept moving about between the summits. You have to wonder about some people.
I could not get much out of them so I called 999 and explained the situation and after chatting to control we agreed I would bring them back down to save MR coming up and meet MR at the car park, the only concern was the young lad as he looked quite bad.
Heavy rain and poor visibility all the way down, they young lad was helps a few times, but we all arrived safely to be greeted by the MR team who all looked quite happy that they managed to stay in the Land Rovers.
I then had the great pleasure in watching the three adults get a dressing down by the MR team leader while the young lad and me got a cuppa given to us.
I had a good chat with the MR team after the second LR took the chaps back to the other parking site where they think they had left from, they were very interested in the radio equipment and I explained what I did with it on the summits.
Well there was no point is going anywhere else so it was off back home, I did look at Fan Fawr, SW-005, but the rest and cuppa had made me see sense.
