I was in England recently and my wife wanted to see Wales. When we were planning the trip I checked to see what there was to climb in Wales. Snowdonia National Park is located in northern Wales and Mt. Snowdon is the highest peak there. We drove to Wales from Wellesbourne where we were staying, about a 4 hour ride. We got a room in Betsy-y-coeth, a nice village with several hiking stores. In the summer Snowdonia is packed with hikers.
The next morning after breakfast we drove 10 minutes to the parking lot at Pen-y-pass. There was a couple inches of snow and ice on the Miners Track as we started up. The Miners Track follows an old road used when copper was mined at Lake Glaslyn further up the mountain. We reached Lyn Lydaw, a lake after about one hour. We crossed this lake on a causeway and then the trail started to get steep. The trail goes up to Glaslyn Lake where the mining used to take place. The legend says that the sword "Excalibur" was thrown into Glaslyn and that King Arthur was mortally wounded on Snowdon. From Glaslyn the trail has some rock climbing to its junction with the Pyg Track. When we reached the Pyg track there were zig-zags up to Blue Pass and the ridge walk to the summit. There is a large monolith (stone) at this junction which I was told is very useful for finding your way down in bad weather. From the monolith to the summit of Snowdon was another 20 minutes. I was told that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay practiced for their Everest climb on Mt. Snowdon in the winter.
We went down the Pyg track all the way to the parking lot, but it got very slippery because the sun was behind the mountain. We saw several people traveling with crampons, my wife let me know that we should have had them also. It took us just as long to get down as it had to summit.
DMP
