FAN FRYNYCH
Fan Frynych from the north
Fan Frynych from the ascent, just half a mile east of the A470.
I arrived in the Brecon Beacons on a gorgeous morning in early March to find the sky perfectly clear - best visibility you can imagine - but temperatures hovering around freezing. The snow from a day or two earlier was patchy in the valley, but looked thick on the tops. I parked at the layby with a couple of picnic tables thats about a mile north of Storey Arms - from here the views up to the imposing crags of Craig Cerrig-gleisiad are awesome,
but I was heading for the neighbouring peak of Fan Frynych. This area of hills to the west of the A470 is known as Fforest Fawr and is less frequented than the well known Beacons just across the road. There is a path (albeit an intermittent one) up Fan Frynych, so I made a steady ascent - running all the way but for a few pauses to check the map. Once at the summit, the views south to Fan Fawr (my final destination) revealed a gorgeous snow field - a desolate but pristine upland with few features to navigate by - I was grateful for the clear conditions.
CRIAG CERRIG-GLEISIAD
From Fan Frynych I ran through the snow on what was probably a path (you could see a smooth line of snow with no rocks poking through) and soon found myself at the summit just behind the imposing crags. Deep snow makes for quite tough going, but at least you know that if you fall you'll have a soft landing. The tranquil stillness atop the Fforest Fawr was amazing - the silence here amid the snows is very loud, if you know what I mean. A path to the next peak, Fan Fawr, probably does exist but I found it impossible to detect and so just ran out across the plateau towards the looming massif..
FAN FAWR
Fan Fawr rises like a great wall on the ridge from Fan Frynych. The summit falls steeply to a craggy eastern face, but declines more gently into the rather formless western slopes. For a while Fan Fawr didn't seem to be getting any nearer as I ran through varying depths of snow (everything from zero to thigh-deep - the latter often taking me by surprise). The north face, if you could call it that, was steep and trackless so I zig-zagged slowly up to the summit plateau and ran eastward to the summit itself - marked with a tiny cairn and a kind of snow cairn that had probably been a snowman a few days earlier. As you'll see from the mini-pic below there had been a few hikers here since the snow - the bootprints of about half a dozen remained.
From Fan Fawr there is actually a well(ish) defined path to the valley and the A470, but with my car stashed further north I took a quick way down back to the plateau between Fan Fawr and Fan Frynych and followed the tracks of a farmers quad bike through the deep snow until they headed back southwards. At this point I was happy to head straight for the road, so I ran and at times slid all the way down the open fellside, pausing to pick my way around some vertical crags. All in all I had a great play in the snow, and found that you can ski in fell shoes if its steep and deep enough.