Weather Links

MWIS. Weather forecast for mountain regions. Only active Friday to Sunday. Highly Recommended.

Met Office. Now it's improved to a 5 day forecast! Great.

Snowdonia Snowline - States the altitude of lying snow in the Carneddau.

Metcheck weather

Advertise your Snowdonia Business here! Email for info.

Accuweather

Snowdon Weather Station Project. Weather data, but is down at the moment. The Webcams show Elidir Fawr and Moel Eilio.

Snowdon Sherpa Bus Timetables

Welsh Highland Railway.

Travelline Wales.

theTrainline - Timetables and online booking

The Welsh 3000s - website just about the 14 peaks.

The BMC - British Mountaineering Council.

The Mountain Bothy Association - yes, there are bothies in Eryri...

TAC - The Angry Corrie Scottish hillwalking fanzine, read it free.

Eryri - Snowdonia National Park.

Oggy Cam . Ogwen Mountain Rescue and a Ogwen Valley webcam.

BBC North West Wales.

Graham's Wales Photos. Loads of excellent pics on Eryri in here.

North Wales Photographs Beautiful photos of North Wales by Simon Kitchin.

Cambrian Mountains National Park A 'Should-Be' fourth welsh national park.

Snowdonia Society Charity which looks after the interests onf the National Park.

eryriway.org.uk Sister site to walkeryri, emphasising long distance trails.

Carnedd Llewelyn via Cwm Llugwy.map

Sat 21st April 2007

click for the map

Distance and Ascent	16.5km, 900m ascent	OS Map Required	OS Explorer 17 Landranger 150
Time	6.5 hours	Difficulties	Scrambling and steep scree, navigation.
Start Location	Glan Denau (on A5 near Ogwen)	End Location	as start
Grading	Moderate / Hard	Facilities	None.
Public Transport	Sherpa Buses from Bangor / Bethesda and Capel Curig.	GPS Files

This walk starts at Glan Denau on the A5, past the Lake towards Capel Curig. You can either park here, or get the Sherpa here from Bethesda or Capel. If you use the Sherpa then you can catch the bus directly to the start of the Reservoir road, or alternatively camp at Gwern Gof Isaf and walk up from your tent.

From Glan Denau, you need to take the stile on the same side of the road as Tryfan. This leads onto the original road through this valley built by one of the Lord Penrhyns and predates Telford’s A5. You have a nice easy walk now along this track as far as Gwern Gof Isaf, which is great to loosen the muscles. You also get views up of Tryfan and the climbers training on Tryfan Bach.

When you reach the second camp site, Gwen Gof Isaf, you can cut across to the main road, before carrying on for a hundred metres or so before you reach the start of the reservoir road. This is the start of the hard work. The track leads you, steeply at first before easing, as far as Ffynnon Llygwy reservoir where a break was well earned. Looking across the lake you can see the path ahead, first along the slopes of Pen yr Helgi Du before heading very steeply upwards to Bwlch Eryl Farchog. This section of path is rather steep and loose in places, so care is needed (its safer as an ascent than a descent).

You now feel that you’re up in the mountains proper, as you can see Llewelyn and the Carneddau, as well as the ridge up to Pen yr Helgi and the imminent climb up Craig yr Ysfa. This first section does involve a short section of serious scrambling. By that I mean you have to use all your limbs and pull yourself up and over to continue the path, but only for one section. Nothing too bad, but if you’ve not done a lot of scrambling it might pose a bit of a problem. The people in front of me took 3 attempts at a line, and by the time they got up were now the people behind me. I reckon they’d got an easier line though, along a sloping slab.

Beyond this, it’s all easy path to the top. You’ve done the majority of the climbing, so you’ll find yourself on top of the 1064m summit quite quickly. Today however, we decided to stop just before the final pull to the summit and shelter by some rocks for lunch. It was much cooler than it had been of late and we decided it might be a bit too nippy to stop on top. It was also busy, so we put out chances of getting shelter on top as slim.

Finally on top, there was no room to shelter, too busy. No problem as we were only staying on top for a short while. It was straight down, and it was decided to follow an untried route off the mountain. There is no path on the Craig Llugwy ‘ridge’ but i know it’s a feasible route. We turned off as soon as we could see the top of the broad ridge, towards what looked like a cairn. It turned out to be a rocky outcrop, but still a good pointer in the right direction. A very faint path leads down the ridge, and it’s all on easy grass if you can’t find it. From the ridge, you enjoy alternative views of the Carneddau and at one point you can see the lakes at Ogwen, Bochlwyd, Idwal and Ffynnon Llygwy. You also enjoy the silence, as we saw nobody on our descent (we saw one group ascend it in the morning), but many other people on other parts of the hill.

Make sure that as you reach the crags above the lake, Craig y Llyn, that you veer to your right as there is no safe way down through them (i know, i tried!). Instead, aim for the wall that should now be visible and parallel that to the road at the lake. If you find yourself on scrambling or very steep ground, then you’ve probably gone the wrong way. Make sure you’ve got your position right as the cliffs appear with little warning.

From the road, you just need to retrace your steps. Only this time, the reservoir road is much easier with gravity on your side.

Height Profile of the route (image courtesy of Tracklogs)

Tracklogs IMHO the best mapping for PC.

MemoryMap Still good, but route handling clumsier.

Viewranger mapping for smartphones.

Fugawi and Anquet are also popular.

Quo The new kid on the block.

Multimap - Free online mapping.

Get a Map - Free online mapping from the OS

Access Land in Wales - online mapping from CCW.