Neo Kalungu-Banda

I completed my Gold DofE in Snowdon with my secondary school. My biggest challenge was conquering Snowdon. It wasn't the walking up Snowdon which I found most difficult, it was coming down it which I found testing. The weather and conditions were far worse than my teachers and our assessor had expected us to handle. After walking to the top of Snowdon, but not reaching the summit, due to the weather conditions, we made our way down from Snowdon. The weather soon got worse and the temperature dropped too. The rain began to aggressively hit our faces and the wind made it difficult for us to communicate with each other unless we were within a one-metre distance of one another. I was leading the way down from Snowdon, as it was only just one path down. While walking down Snowdon, at one point, I thought that it was possible I could have gotten serious hypothermia up there. The rain had soaked every inch of skin on our bodies and had filled our walking boots with water. No matter whether you had the best waterproof gear there was no way that it would have survived the rain that was being unleashed from the sky that day. I genuinely thought that, if we didn’t get to lower ground in good time, something bad could have happened to any of us, especially myself. Therefore, I decided to start jogging down Snowdon slightly ahead of my group, but still remaining in good reach and sight of them, to ensure I could begin to warm up again. I would run and stop for brief moments, just to check that I hadn’t gone too far away from my peers and once I saw them I would continue jogging. At one point, my group called my name and said they couldn’t see me anymore due to the poor visibility. Soon after this we were met by our assessor, who came to check we were doing okay in the extreme weather conditions. Within a few kilometres, we managed to reach an area where the rain was no longer as forceful and where the wind had begun to slow down. It was the calming of the end of the storm.
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