free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).
Because I only get a handful of chances a year to get to the hills I was praying for decent weather after my 2 Scottish outings (Blaven and Sgorr nam Fiannaidh) this year were marred by clag after 600-700 m. Thankfully , after a couple of brief downpours we were blessed with clear skies gifting us with awesome views.
We parked at the side of the A5 then across and up past Tal y Llyn Ogwen on the path up roughly following the Afon Lloer but kept looking back across to Tryfan and the Glyders
Once Cwm Lloer is reached the path takes you left up the east ridge of Pen yr Ole Wen
- Across to Tryfan
- zoomed
- across Cwm Lloer to Carnedd Dafydd
There's some slight scrambling before reaching the summit
A trip southish is a must for views to the Glyders and down Nant Ffrancon
- looking down Nant Ffrancon
- spot the van
Back up to summit then along the ridge which stays above 3000ft for around 3 miles with the next summit being Carnedd Dafydd
then along the top of the Ysgolion Duon cliffs and eventually up to the highest point of the day Carnedd Llewellyn at1064m
- Carnedd Dafydd from Carnedd Llewellyn
We could see most of northern Snowdonia from Llewellyn such were the clear skies but noticed that the clouds never did leave the top of Snowdon all day even tho its just 20 meters higher. Just down to your luck on the day I suppose. I bet it was rammed on there whereas we only saw about 6 people all day

. From the summit it was roughly E then SE downthe ridge to Bwlch Eryl Farchog where instead of ascending Pen yr Helgi Du we baled out down to the Ffynnon Llugwy reservoir partly due to spending too much time gawping at the awesome views and partly due to lack of hill fitness living in boring flat Leicestershire.
- cliffs down intoCwm Eigiau
- across to Pen yr Helgi Du
- Ffynnon Llugwy reservoir
- path on the left
We descended down a zig zagged path that had a lot of work building retaining stone walls to stop erosion down along the shores of the ressie. Dont know where we went wrong but the path just seemed to stop at the bottom end of the reservoir. we could see the tarmac access road over to our left but could see Tryfan to the right and foolishly thought we knew better than the route we had researched

This led to an energy sapping yomp through bogs and streams and more ascent trying to get out of a farmers private property across barb wire fences where at 1 stage my son nearly left more than a strip of trouser material hanging off the fence

Still the views were stunning and overall a superbly enjoyable day.
- sun rays onto Llyn Ogwen and into Cwm Idwal