A circuit in the Black Mountains

After a grim period of weather the Met Office served up a compelling weather forecast for a wander onto the hills.

Taking into account the wind direction, likelihood of showers and sunset light, the Black Mountains were chosen and a circuit of Cwm Banw. Nic was enthused enough to accompany me. Ascending through the fields a local farmer was met and a brief chat about the impact of Storm Emma elicited that about 2 feet of snow had fallen and drifted to very impressive depths, all the minor roads were blocked for a few days and it had taken the farmer 15 hours to dig a route to get feed to livestock, a journey that would normally take 5 minutes. To illustrate the severity of the weather event, 2 weeks on there were still snow patches a few feet deep in the sunken holloway on the path up. Reaching the open moorland and sadly the weather changed from blue skies, fluffy white clouds and warm sunshine to more ominous looking clouds, much less blue sky and the donning of winter jackets.

Landforms and patterned vegetation in the Black Mountains

The Black Mountain environs exhibit a curious mixture of landforms from plateau surfaces that suggest relict planation surfaces 10's of millions years old to those attributable with more confidence to repeated glaciations in the pleistocene. Areas of patterned vegetation may be associated with underlying superficial deposits that have been subjected to periglacial processes. Illuminated by more desirable light these would have been more apparent and a mental note was made to revisit at a more optimal time of day and year.

Squall lighting and open moorland

The best lighting occurred on the approach to Pen Allt-mawr where foreground composition was limited to moorland vegetation and a simple demonstration on the why side lighting is preferable for saturated colour.

The approach to Pen Allt-mawr

On reaching the summit of Pen Allt-mawr the squall hit with rain quickly turning to sleet and the novelty of ice coating any exposed clothing. Nic was less than impressed. Still there were grand views to the west until the hill fog obscured everything. I raised the prospect of waiting for the squall to pass and received the look of mutiny from Nic. The planned high level exposed plateau circuit of Cwn Banw walking into wind driven sleet held little appeal and instead we made our way back to the car via a lower, less exposed route. A consultation of the OS map indicated a stream would need to be crossed and that stream would no doubt be swollen. So the return route would keep to a high level and basically contouring, which explains why several relict vegetated periglacial boulder lobes were traversed and on another day these would have presented some photographic foreground interest rather than tiresome obstacles. I feel confident in stating that this particular area is not well visited. Eventually the squall passed, hill fog cleared to make navigation easier and then a brief break in the clouds allowed some sunshine through illuminating the coed cae on the south facing slopes of Cwm Banw and the Sugar Loaf hill in the distance.

A view down Cwm Banw to the Sugar Loaf. 

The stream was easily crossed at a higher elevation whilst lower down the white water suggested very high water flows and probably a more challenging crossing. We made it back to the car just before another squall arrived, a good end to the trip and some locations to be revisited.