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A beautiful morning, and a challenging – sometimes unintentionally so – short route over some of the most familiar peaks of Snowdonia.
From the Idwal Cottage car-park - empty at breakfast-time but overflowing a few hours later - a lovely stepped path heads up the trade route into the beautiful hollow of Cwm Idwal.
- Pen yr Ole Wen
- Stream from Llyn Idwal & Y Garn
- Twll Du over Llyn Idwal
- Y Garn over Llyn Idwal
- Llyn Idwal
Having tried to find a circuit avoiding either of the notorious scree paths up to the Glyders, it was necessary to find a way up onto the crest of the Y Gribin ascent ridge: a path sets off quite clearly from the eastern shore of the lake, but it soon disappears. If tempted off by the number of cross-paths trending right towards Glyder Fawr, you end up with a very steep and testing scramble over grass, heather and intermittent rock. This looked like a wrong turn almost immediately, but somehow going back down seemed worse than carrying on, and it was fiercely tough – no clear ways and worryingly few holds; much the hardest thing I’ve seen in Wales, and making Tryfan later seem very easy indeed. Cresting the ridge and seeing a clear ‘motorway’ path coming in from the north made this feel even more foolish! (The safe route up seems to be straight east from the lake, heading for the far north of the ridge).
- Looking down ascent of Y Gribin
- Tryfan over Llyn Bochlwyd from Y Gribin
- Llyn Ogwen from Y Gribin
Once up there though, Y Gribin itself makes for a good route up to the summits, a narrowing grass ridge with views to the lakes either side and then an enjoyable scramble up the steep rocky southern end with plenty of choices (again I might have found one of the hairier ones, crawling along a short but very exposed protruding rib…).
- Y Gribin southern end scramble
- Glyder Fawr
- Ascending along this rib may indicate a wrong turn!
- Y Gribin
The high Glyder ridge has its own character, bleak and rocky underfoot with three jagged and very bouldery peaks to clamber up to, and, even through a slightly hazy day that never quite unveiled Snowdon, glimpses of some fabulous views.
- Ogwen valley & Pen yr Ole Wen
- Glyder Fach from Glyder Fawr
- Castell y Gwynt
- Western Glyderau over Y Gribin
The descent to the east remains rocky and slow-going almost down to the col, but then the miner’s track contouring back across the face of the mountain towards Tryfan is a very good one. Tryfan itself rather belies its exceptionally steep façade when approached from this side, its popularity apparent from the multitude of paths that lead up through the rocks. While it’s an interesting and fun climb, there’s nothing very difficult about it at any point, and you emerge at the top (and into a picnicking horde – having seen three or four people all day until now, there must have been forty-odd sitting around the summit!) pretty quickly. One view of someone timorously attempting the ‘Adam and Eve’ manoeuvre was quite enough to convince me never to try it though!
- Tryfan
- Eastern Glyderau & Llyn Caseg-fraith
- Tryfan from the miner's track
- Y Garn over Llyn Bochlwyd
- Ogwen valley
- Western Glyderau from Tryfan
- Glyder Fach from Tryfan
After dropping down a reasonable corner-cutting way to the south-west, the path down through Cwm Bochlwyd seems to have undergone a lot of surfacing work quite recently and, while busy, it makes for a pleasant and very easy descent to the Ogwen valley.
- Glyders from Llyn Bochlwyd
With slightly better navigation, this seemed a very good route around the Glyders, even if you might be left wondering about taking on Tryfan from its more challenging side next time…