Snowdon Scramble - off the beaten tracks!

Ben Mellor
Mar 7, 2022
4 min read

Updated: Mar 8, 2022

A work colleague and good friend of mine set out the start of the year to get a few goals under his belt; Do a white collar boxing event and climb a mountain.

My boxing carear took a stumble at the first hurdle so i was in no position to help him down that route, but i could certainly give him some help on the latter! During the talks leading upto the day out, Freya, another member of the work team showed some interest in coming and was soon invited along.

The issue came when Connor wanted to get to the top of snowdon...... on a weekend. Back 10 years ago I would have been full of enthusiasm at the thought of ticking off the different routes. These days it looked more of a chore than an eventful day. Nevertheless I hit the books and online forums to find out whats actually there to be done off the beaten track.

It didnt take long, after reading through Steve Ashtons "Scrambles in Snowdonia" book that i found a mirade of little gems that could suffice. Of course I've heard of the obvious Crib Goch & clogwyn y person erete, but nothing that was of an easy grade not known to the masses. A grade 1- was just the ticket for an introduction to some bare rock and solitude in the mountains With 2 new and fairly fit walkers.

Much to Freya’s disgust the wake up call was 4:20am in order to get to Llamberris pass before the car parking spaces had gone. 7:50am wasnt early enough to get a spot at pen y pas car park, which proved as a benefit forcing us further down the path to a more convenient lay by which had no occupants yet, merely 30 seconds from the access gate for the Cwm Glas gateway.

Merely 10 minutes into the ascent, the route threw up some brilliant views of the glyderau. It’s not very often I’ve seen this side of the mountain range, but what a spectacular view of the stricking Bryant’s gulley practically running from top to bottom of the glyders. This route has to be on the to do list this year.

The weather suprised me on the morning. The forecast was a generally overcast outlook with 20 mile an hour winds. We stood 20 mins into the route being bathed in bright sunshine. However, a view up the cwm painted a picture of 2 worlds, bright sunshine to the right of the ridge with some moody clouds over the top of clogwyn y person arête, who knew what type of day we had in store for our small party at this point.

About an hour into the route we came to the base of the scramble & we were all in pretty high spirits. the Walk in was pretty arduous with it being one of the steeper routes up snowdon, sweat was fairly evident on both mine and connors brow, quite annoyingly youth was prevailing at this point with young Freya barely even raising her heartbeat slightly. With the 3 of us in good condition, we pushed into the light fluttering of snow to the base of the first scramble with our spirits up! Half the ascent was completed at this point, thumbs up all round!

The first section of scrambling was very mellow, I’d almost describe it as a steep slightly screeish slope. This sparked some interest with Connor and Freya whereby they first used there hands during the route. The second (pictured below) threw up some questions where the fault in the buttress allowed room for a little bit exposure beneath them. This was a bad time to find out that Connor was scared of heights, alongside the snow lead Connor to get slightly unnerved by the height. Two good moves got Connor out of the gulley giving them both a good feel for scrambling, just the right amount of fun and worry!

As the arête petered out, the Llamberis path came into view, shortly after we popped out at the pyg track junction. just at this point, the clouds lifted and gave us all the most spectacular view of snowdon, snow clad and ominous. With just a short stroll left to get to the summit, we shot up there in great spirits. While I was narked at the que to the summit, I kept my frustrations back a little bit for the sake of my company as we went up to get the money shot. Mission accomplished!!

I planned to descend down the pyg track for two reasons. One, the ascent was pretty steep on gras which is usually wet this time of year, so I didn’t want to risk my colleagues sliding down to the van. Two, even though the pyg track is a busy path, the scenery within the snowdon horseshoe is hard to be rivalled by other mountainous beauty spots in the country. This didn’t unfortunately bite me in the backside as the road walk back down to the lay by was a long one, but worth going out the way for!

All in all a great day out taking two enthusiastic people up the pinnacle summit within the range whilst offering a taste of the scrambling that is available in the area.