Pen Y Ole Wen - Wild camping & scramble heaven!!

Ben Mellor
Feb 6, 2022
5 min read

"Ben, I love checking out the photos you post from the mountains. I really want to climb Snowdon, lets set a date up"

the above is the most common chat I have with majority of people I know. Many of them talk the talk but never walk the walk. I thought this would be the case with my friend Jay Langford who (as far as i was aware) never really had much interest for the outdoors. He wanted to take a trip over to North wales to get some rugged terrain beneath his feet. We did a day out on the North ridge of Tryfan in the summer. And what an epic day it was!

Much to my surprise, Jay wanted more & wished for some wild camping. I happily obliged & we set a date up to camp & scramble the next day. He seemed to have a no-nonsense attitude when it came to walking on our first outing which I really admired, hours of trudging are usually a shock to the system, but not to Jay, he just muscled on in the blistering heat of the day and swallowed up the short scrambling sections. Prime partner material.

So onto the route of the weekend! we planned to arrive in the Ogwen valley after work on Friday evening. I planned to have an hour walk into Cwm Lloer, an area which haven't ventured into before as i usually tackle Pen Y Ole Wen from its south-west side nearest the Ogwen cottage, the most obvious route. We planned to camp in the Cwm before starting the scrambling on broad gulley ridge on the next morning, summitting Pen Y Ole Wen, then round to the summit of Carnedd Dafydd. The route transpired to be a fine line for the weekend.

We started out on the route 1 hour before sunset which allowed enough time to get the trek by the side of Afon Lloer. Such spectacular views behind us of Tryfan bathing in the sunset light, this route is noted in a few photography guidebooks in the area to render great foreground images of the afon Lloer stream with the backdrop as Tryfans shark fin edge, very disappointed not to grab a shot myself however we was lugging too much camping / climbing kit to care about photography at this stage.

We reached the cwm in the last of the days light with enough time to pitch up. With Jay not having a tent I donated mine & made use of my cheaply purchased tarp a few seasons back. I couldn't quite get the design tight all over in a tepee configuration, this wasn't to much of an issue given that the forecast wasn't going to bring heavy rain or winds overnight, I did pray for the weatherman to be correct, otherwise you could pretty much write off my shelter.... I mean.... look at the state of it!

I noticed Jay had a 45ltr very large rucksack on which was completely brimmed when we started off. I wondered what on earth he had in there. once we settled for some dinner I came to realise. He'd lugged up the hill enough food to feed an army and the worlds thickest knitted jacket. While I thought it was pretty comedic, the food and his warm coat served him well over the next 45 minutes where we continually cooked steak bathed in 1kg of butter and prawns. Jay looked like the most content guy on earth at this point. Chatting complete rubbish about life and flipping steak with a few ciders. Simple pleasures.

After dinner we got settled in for the night. Considering the "flappy nature" of my setup I managed to get 6 hours of sleep which I was surprised with. A belly full of food and a few hours sleep seen us ready for the next days challenge.

The next morning there wasn't a flicker of wind and low hanging fog in the cwm. which spelled bad news ..... Midges. We sharply cooked up some breakfast while pacing around camp to get away from the buggers. Striking camp was a quick affair we were being eaten alive! with us completing a loop walk, we chose to stash all of our camping equipment, no one wants to be lugging up a load of gear up a rockface that they no longer need.

A short walk over to the left hand side of broad gulley we was met with a buttress that seemed to be chopped into three sections (picture above). we tackled the bottom section which was pleasant and easy going, the rock seemed to be greasy and a lot of vegetation. This area is a lesser trodden area of the Snowdonia range so to be expected really. The second buttress had three prominent routes up. Both left and right were tricky & mossy. We opted to take the middle portion which was a chute with a leaning slab up through the middle. Getting onto the slab was tricky for me and greasy also. I did have a little "moment" at this section as throwing a leg over onto the slab with no protection, plenty of exposure down below gave me a little tremble & putting all my trust into the grip of my right boot. but, to be expected on a grade two scramble.

I set up a belay and brought up Jay at which point I was completely shocked at how fast he came up through the chute. Completely unphased and powering on through. I started to wonder either he was completely fearless & naturally gifted or I was crap (I'm still undecided). At this point we took stock on where we was on the route.

It always astounds me on how 45 mins of scrambling the landscape can change, we went from being on the ground in the cwm to being near the clouds taking in the atmospheric views Cwm Lloer has to offer. What a beautiful place. Rarely ventured by hill walkers it truly is a wild gem in the Snowdonia range. The view taking was however short-lived as the midge were slowly eating us alive.

The final section was easy going & we shot up it, trying to stick to the rock rather than trudging the grass. Nothing too strenuous here.

Summit abound we took out the camera to grab some shots. The intermittently cloudy sky added to the atmosphere. Views galore here from the top of pen y ole wen which is slowly becoming my favourite destination in the Snowdonia range.

Following a quick sandwich we made the loop round to Carnedd Dafydd, a gentle walk upto the summit seen us down the grassy slope back into Cwm Lloer were we grabbed our camping kit and skipped back down to the Ogwen valley.

It's hard to put into words the views and the feeling while working through this route. The two days seemed to tick every box for me. Wildness, camping, scrambling, hillwalking, isolated, bush craft. I struggle to think of another fitting 2 day excursion that hits the way this one did!! It is easily possible to get this route done in one day. the camping merely adds a bit of extra spice!

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