The Glyderau

Thursday 4th September 2003

I was in the middle of a week spent walking up the three thousand foot high mountains of Snowdonia and on the first day I had climbed two lesser known tops in Elidir Fawr and Y Garn before moving my attentions to the biggest of them all, and the one that lends its name to the whole park: Snowdon. I had such a great time going up Snowdon that I went up it again the day after, from a different direction, but after that I finally managed to tear myself away from that great mountain and continue bagging the other three thousand footers. I had so far bagged four and missed one, but I was undeterred in my goal to bag the other ten before the end of the week, and on this walk I managed to bag three more. These days I’m not so obsessed with bagging the top of mountains as I’ve found that the best bits of a mountain are invariably not at the summit, and even the view is often better lower down than on a broad summit plateau.

At this early stage in my walking career I hadn’t grasped this truth yet, so on a gloriously hot and sunny day I set off from the Ogwen Cottage car park along a popular path that climbs into the stunning surrounds of Cwm Idwal. After passing rock-climbers on the cliffs above Llyn Idwal I climbed steeply into the excitingly rocky landscape of the Devil’s Kitchen, called in Welsh as Twll Du, the Black Hole. I had a thrilling climb through the Black Hole, despite sweating copiously from the heat and eventually emerged from the rock gully onto a shallow depression with Llyn y Cŵm a short distance away. Before reaching the lake I turned left up a vast, dreary landscape of loose stones that eventually ended on a broad summit plateau that is littered with large collections of rocks. One of these was the summit of Glyder Fawr, the highest point in the Glyderau, the collective name for the mountain range between Nant Peris and Llyn Ogwen.

Since I was unsure which collection of rocks was the summit I visited all of them so I could be sure of actually bagging the summit, such is the stupidity of summit bagging. Continuing east from the summit I dropped gradually down to Bwlch y Ddwy Glyder before a short, sharp, rocky climb brought me up to the summit of Glyder Fach. Before visiting the summit I had to stop by the weirdly shaped rock formations of Castell y Gwynt and climb to the top of them where I had views across the Glyderau and beyond, back to Snowdon and onward to the Carneddau. The top of Glyder Fach drew my eye as it features a seemingly precarious rock known as the Cantilever Stone where one can amazingly defy gravity by standing at the end without the whole thing toppling over.

The summit of Glyder Fach is a much more interesting place than its higher neighbour Glyder Fawr so it attracts many more visitors, despite not having the characteristics that would give it Munro status, if it was in Scotland. Eventually I left the summit and made my way across the rock strewn landscape past the top of Bristly Ridge to a steep scree slope with a drop of over 600 hundred feet, which was not a very pleasant descent as I gingerly made my way down the loose stones carefully trying to not let the stones slip from under my foot. In all my subsequent visits to this area I have avoided this scree slope by either going around it on the Miner’s Track or above it scrambling along the top of the Bristly Ridge.

At the bottom of the huge scree slope is Bwlch Tryfan with the awesomely shaped mountain of Tryfan beyond it. There are very few mountains in Britain that can’t be summited without simply walking, and Tryfan is one of those. On this occasion I took the easiest route up, which is a grade 1 scramble that involves climbing the rocks around the Far South Peak before climbing a steep gully up to the summit. I remember sitting at the summit below the two large rocks, known as Adam and Eve, that sit on top of the mountain, and becoming very nervous about the sheer drops around me. I’m not great with heights so I was uneasy sitting on such a narrow summit with such long drops not from where I sat. It wasn’t long before I got back onto my feet and made my way back down the mountain. In subsequent years I have taken the more challenging route up the north ridge of Tryfan, and even jumped between Adam and Eve, but I’ve never gotten over my unease at sheer drops, which probably keeps me out of danger.

Slowly I made my way back down the distinctively shaped mountain to Bwlch Tryfan where I dropped down the path that passes the Australia-shaped lake of Llyn Bochlwyd before dropping steeply down the northern slopes back to Ogwen Cottage. I was lucky to have such good weather for my first walk in the fabulous rock-filled landscape of the Glyderau as for one who enjoys walking in rugged, rocky scenery I was overwhelmed with delight at the abundance of rock in the Glyderau. Rock-climbers are well catered for in this area, and even for us mere mortals it is an area with plenty of safe, but thoroughly enjoyable, walking opportunities. I always enjoy my walking in this area, especially when the weather is good, but the most tragic thing about this area is that it is now almost five years since I last did any walking there. That surely is something that I must correct at my earliest opportunity.