Mount Snowdon, Wales
Today's post is about how to (and how not to) climb Mount Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales, naked. First, how not to climb it. Above is English climber Dan Arkle posing in the Italian Dolomites.
In January 2014, for some reason, Arkle wanted to be naked on Crib Goch, a ridge next to Mount Snowdon in Wales. He climbed at night by flashlight, using an ice axe and crampons, to arrive at the ridge at dawn. Then he took off his clothes.
He then walked naked along the ridge. He said "I walked a few hundred yards naked until my feet got too cold, it felt very free to not be weighed down by my usual equipment and to feel the snow crunching between my toes."
A spokesman for Mountain Rescue England and Wales called it the stupidest thing he has ever seen. He said "Crib Goch is notorious and there have been several fatalities. It has a vertical drop of several hundred feet on the one side, and a long slope on the other. There is no margin for error. Apart from the fact that he's naked and exposed, he has nothing on his feet which means he has no grip with the mountain."
A better way to climb Mount Snowdon naked (the main summit, not the Crib Goch ridge) was demonstrated by Welshmen Gordon Hughes (left) and Nick Marriot (right). As a fundraising challenge for a friend who had cancer, they climbed the mountain barefoot in May, 2022. The friend was a space enthusiast who liked to wear an orange NASA flight suit, so Gordon and Nick dressed as astronauts in homage to their friend.
The route up Mount Snowdon is not treacherous; there are paths and steps. But it took them 3 hours to reach the summit.
The friend had suggested that they bare all, not just their feet, so when they approached the summit, they stripped naked and climbed to the top.
Here are Nick (left) and Gordon (right) at the summit. At first they hid their privates. Then they exposed themselves and did a "helicopter twirl". Some of the people at the summit were shocked, but others cheered and said "well done."
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