Pete's Eats - The well known walker's and climber's caff in Llanberis.

Weather Links

MWIS. Weather forecast for Snowdonia.

Met Office. 5 day mountain forecast.

Snowdonia Snowline - Daily record of the Carneddau Snowline.

Metcheck weather - Longer range forecasts.

Advertise your Snowdonia Business here! Email for info.

Accuweather

Snowdon Weather Station Project. Weather data and Webcams of 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.

Snowdon via Cwm Clogwyn.
Distance and Ascent 8.5km, 980m ascent one way. OS Map Required OS Explorer 17 Landranger 150 Time 3.5 hours. Difficulties Route finding off path. Start Snowdon Ranger End Snowdon Summit. Grading Moderate Facilities Parking and WC. Public Transport Snowdon Sherpa run regularly. GPS Files

It seems sometimes like all the walking routes up Snowdon are busy and far too civilised. Looking at the map, there’s been one route up that’s a little contrived, but pathless for a great section. It does start off on one of the paths, and ends the route on another path, but somewhere in between you get to explore Snowdon’s least known cwm (probably along with Tregalan) and some beautiful mountain tarns where you can lunch and generally waste some time on the way up.

The route starts off from the Snowdon Ranger Youth Hostel and follows the path of the same name. This is very straightforward, following the zig-zags at first, before the path gladly levels out. You can see Cwm Clogwyn to your right, below the summit. The blunt Llechog curving up to enclose the cwm and meet the South Ridge at the sharp ridge of Bwlch Main, before the final sweep to the summit.

The lower end of the Llechog ridge rises precipitously from the boggy Cwm Treweunydd and might make a scramble from the base if you feel adventurous. Instead, we’ll be tacking the ridge from Cwm Clogwyn.

To reach Cwm Clogwyn, we’ll need to get off path. Follow the Ranger path until you’re nearly at Bwlch Cwm Brwynog, above Llyn Ffynnon-y-gwas (at around SH588 557). There’s a pretty obvious low ridge that hides the lake, and it is this that you’ll need to aim for. The first section is a littler wet, but once you’re on the higher ground it becomes much easier and a faint path leads down to the low dam.

Now you might be tempted to cross directly to the Afon Goch that tumbles from the cwm above, but that course is very wet. Instead, the faint path, if you find it, contours around the flat area centred on SH594 550 along easy ground before making for the fence that follows the Afon Goch steeply up to Cwm Clogwyn. When I did this, we camped on the rim of this boggy area near some boulders – a little gem of a site.

The path is largely lost now, but the river guides us. After slogging up, you can walk directly to Llyn Coch, and then Llyn Glas yet higher up. These aren’t where we’re headed, so just before Llyn Coch you can cross the fence at a stile and see if you can cross the river. We had to descend slightly (to where the map shows the stream braiding) before we could cross, but this didn’t prevent a bootful of ice cold water.

Take a rough bearing across the rough grass towards Llyn Nadroedd and follow its shore to the outlet stream. Take the line to the right of the steeper cliffs (obviously!) and this is where you’ll need to choose your line carefully. If in doubt, you can probably contour around to the Rhyd Ddu path and there was a faint path that seems to do just that. It was pretty steep, but the line was easy enough when we did it. There wasn’t much to see as the clag was down at 500m, the wind was gale force and rain as heavy as it could get.

The climb is only around 100m before flattening out (SH594 539) and suddenly there are a couple of cairns to follow. Your choice, you can continue uphill and keep away from the crowds as much as possible, or continue along the flat area to meet the path in a couple of minutes.

From here, follow the Rhyd Ddu path up (see here, and here). We decided to descend to Rhyd Ddu due to the gale force winds. Carrying camping packs, we didn’t fancy crossing Bwlch Main! However, you can be sure that for one, you’ve ascended Snowdon by one of the quietest routes, and definitely the longest direct route! Couple this with a descend of Lliwedd to Nant Gwynant (not the usual Pen y Pass) and even Snowdon shows us it’s still got a few secrets to reveal.

General Links

Snowdonia attractions Several great reviews about some of Snowdonia's better known attractions. 

English-welsh dictionary Links and resources to help you translate that welsh word into English.

Walking shoes - Another site that I found that sells walking shoes online.

Merrell Walking Shoes from fitnessfootwear.com, decent little site i found for Merrell walking shoes.

Whalley Warm and Dry - paramo stockists, great service and range.

V-G Walking and Backpacking. Inspirational website detailing one to three (and more) day walks around the UK.

Trekking Britain. Route descriptions & experience as opposed to guide book.

OutdoorsMagic - Forum based website, lots of information on here.

Phil George - Mountain Leader Training in Llanberis.

Peak and Fell Walking - A photographic guide to walking in Britain's National Parks.

Wild Tramp.co.uk - New site on walking in the UK. Looks promising.

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.

Open Street Map - Open source mapping as featured on this site.

Multimap - Free online mapping.

Get a Map - Free online mapping from the OS

Access Land in Wales - online mapping from CCW.