A big THANK YOU to all those who sponsored the children for the Snowdon Challenge raising funds for the new floor for the youth club.

On the 27th of April 26 children and 12 adults in gathered at the base of Mt. Snowdon for the Snowdon Challenge. This was to raise £2,000 for The Place Youth Club floor. Each child had written to friends, relatives and gone door to door in order to raise a goal of at least £120 (each). Many went door to door for the first time in their neighborhoods, some with parents but many by themselves and by the date of departure they all had reached their goal.

Apart from the climb up Mt. Snowdon itself we were also faced with other challenges - namely the weather. The day of the walk was forecast to be heavy rain in the morning and light rain in the afternoon. We choose the afternoon but by the time we set off, we were blessed as it cleared up to some degree - however we were warned that there were very strong winds at the top with low visibility due to the cloud cover being quite low. We ranged in age between 4 & 60 and after setting off at 12 noon, by walking steadily for about 90 minutes we managed to get to the halfway point. During this time we had no complaints of “my legs are tired” as we made our way up the mountain.

At the half way stage the wind had really picked up and we had a short lunch break. It was quite cold due to the wind and we met people coming back who had given up reaching the top, as they told us that there were 85mph winds at the top and visibility was down to nine feet. This led to a lot of discussion amongst the adults about whether to continue but the children were determined to go on. At this point we decided to send the very little ones back and the rest of us made small groups of three children to one adult with the understanding that if it really was too dangerous they would call if off and come back down with their groups.

We set off again at 2pm and soon were in thick cloud which made us loose contact with each group. We could hear each other but couldn’t see each other. As we continued up, the visibility got slightly better and the winds did die down a bit and finally at around 4pm we reached the top. We took some pictures as evidence but we didn’t stay very long as it was very windy and cold. It took the majority of us about two and a half hours to get back down the mountain but the last person got off at around 7.45pm. As we walked back down past the half way point the cloud did lift and we saw some sun which was very welcome as it really warmed us up.

On the way up I think many of us found muscles that we haven’t used for years and on the way down (much harder) we found muscles we’ve probably never used!! I think most of the children were exhausted but felt a great accomplishment at reaching the summit, especially with the conditions they were faced with. In all they managed to raise over £3,000 so we hope it won’t be long before the new floor is down.