For a start, you don’t use the railway. Who would dream of
travelling on a train that’s given to falling off the mountain? All right, it
fell off on the opening day in 1896 and has never done so since, but never mind
the safety issue, it’s just cheating. Snowdon is a mountain and you climb it.
Or you claim to have climbed it. George Burrows claimed to have climbed it in a
couple of hours in 1862, accompanied by his daughter wearing a crinoline (it
was his daughter wearing it), and to have seen magnificent views from the
summit, whereas anyone who has climbed it knows that there’s a high probability
of not even being able to see the summit when you’re standing on it, let alone
anything else.
What you do see at the top is the café, which used to be
dire, and is now far far better – unless you arrive in lousy, windy, wet
weather, exhausted and longing for a hot drink, only to find it shut. In which
case, it’s worse than dire.
I‘ve been climbing Snowdon once a year since about 1978,
primarily to convince myself I can do it. Haven’t managed for the last couple
of years due to arthritic knees, which is very depressing, but I’m going to do
it again if it kills me.
My first attempt, from Llanberis… no, it wasn’t really an
attempt. I and my sister set off from Llanberis wearing skirts and sandals,
because we were passing through and thought a stroll was called for. We did
miraculously reach the half-way café (is it still there?) before turning back,
but seeing the mountain, a real mountain, rising up before us, and a footpath
showing us the way, we decided we’d return with proper boots and rain coats.
For years, we continued to climb from Llanberis, because it seemed so obviously
safe. If a train could do it, surely we could. Eventually, we discovered the other paths,
and, after trying them, concluded that the Llanberis path is not only
unnecessarily long, but also slightly boring. Matched only, in this, by the
Snowdon Ranger path.
The best path, if you want to have a scenic walk and cheat,
is the one that starts at Pen y Pass. Cheating, because the car park which is
the start of the path is already halfway up the mountain. This is really a double route. Take the left
hand fork for the Miner’s track, via the lakes, or the right hand fork for the
Pig (or PYG) track, and if you make it to the top, you can return by the other
route and make a round trip of it (who wants to retrace their own steps?). Back
in 1984, going Up the Miners and Down the Pig was, of course, a political
statement, but it has probably lost some of its meaning by now.
One of the benefits of the Miner’s Track is that it takes
you past the lakes, Llyn Llydaw and Glaslyn, and if you can’t cope with the
thought of carrying on, but you are embarrassed at the sight of small children frolicking
past you as you wheeze and pant and clasp your sides, you can always pretend
that you only intended to walk to the lakes, and never had any intention of
going any further.
If you do decide to go on, you have to cope with The ZigZag.
Our coping mechanism for this was Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut. You get two squares
at each turn. This ensures that you are actually heavier by the time you reach
the top, instead of several pounds lighter.
The paths from Pen y Pass are very popular. So popular that
we’ve had to give up trying to park there on several occasions. The Rhyd Ddu
path, from the other side of the mountain, is usually a lot less cluttered with
people. It benefits from a great pub at the bottom and a spectacular ridge at
the top, and it was also just about within walking distance of our Beddgelert
campsite. Within easy distance at the start, that is, but it seemed like a
million miles away by the time we got back to the bottom and realised that we
still had a couple of miles to walk before we could collapse, groaning, on our
deflated lilos. I would say that the
Rhyd Ddu path is not the most interesting, at least on its lower sections, but
it was on the Rhyd Ddu path that I first saw my Brocken Spectre. In fact the
only time I saw my Brocken Spectre. It’s something you can go through your
whole life and never see, so if you want to know what a Brocken Spectre is, it’s
your shadow cast onto the top of clouds that are below you – except that it’s a
shadow only you can see. Three of us were standing on the Llechog ridge,
looking down on clouds, and each of us saw our own shadow, but nobody else’s.
Very weird, very enchanting.
The most challenging of the listed routes is the Watkin
path, starting from Pont Bethania between Llyn Gwynant and Llyn Dinas, the
lowest starting point of any of the paths, so you have the highest climb. After
all, if you’re going to climb a mountain, you might as well climb it all. It’s
a route that has wonderful views throughout, up towards the summit and back
down into the Gwynant valley, taking you past beautiful waterfalls, with pools
where sweaty walkers can’t resist swimming in the summer. It’s a stretch that
always reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkin’s Inversnaid; ‘Wiry heathpacks,
flitches of fern and the beadbonny ash that hangs over the burn,’ and it leads
you to Plas Cwmllan, an old house wrecked by war-time target practice.
The
route then passes the Gladstone rock , where a plaque commemorates an address
given by an elderly Gladstone on the subject of the rights of small nations. As
he had climbed a good way up Snowdon and was addressing a crowd of local Welsh,
you can hardly blame them for assuming he was referring to Wales, although he
was actually talking about the Balkans. An easy mistake.
After the Gladstone rock, the path climbs – seriously climbs – up past and through abandoned mines and slag heaps,
to the ridge, Bwlch Ciliau, between the sheer cliffs of Y Lliwydd and the
summit proper of Snowdon. A note about this ridge. Climb in thick cloud, as we
did on our first attempt, and you don’t really appreciate where you are.
Whatever the weather, sometimes you really need a pee. Modestly clambering
behind a rock when you’re on Bwlch Ciliau in order to relieve yourself might
seem like a good idea, except that clouds on Snowdon can lift as quickly as
they come down, and you can find yourself, knickers around your ankles, in
bright sunlight, facing across the lakes to a group of boy scouts climbing up
the Miner’s Track. It is worth the embarrassment however, because after Bwlch
Ciliau, you have to climb the last slippery slithering scree slope at the top
of the Watkin path and if, like me, you’re not very good with heights, sheer
drops and balance, you may very well want to wet yourself.
This is why I no longer take this route up the Watkin, much
to the relief of all boy scouts. What I do is follow the lower part of the
path, past the waterfalls, up to Plas Cwmllan, and then head off across the
valley – admittedly, you do have to wallow through a couple of acres of bog –
and scramble very satisfyingly up the ridge beyond, to join the last section of
the Rhyd Ddu path, taking in the narrow Bwlch Main ridge (don’t attempt it in a
high wind). The best of all possible worlds.
What you do not do is take the route via Crib Goch. I did.
Once. Mostly on hands and knees, and at one point I did decide just to freeze
and wait to be rescued by helicopter. Don’t do it.