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 Watkin Path
Distance and Ascent 13.5km, 1200m ascent OS Map Required OS Explorer 17 Landranger 150 Time 5 hours. Difficulties Scree at top is an accident blackspot. Start Location Bethania End Location As start or Pen y Pass Grading Hard Facilities Cafe, parking WC. Public Transport Sherpa buses every 2 hours to Bethania, more often PYP GPS Files

This path has always escaped my interest. In fact, most of the Standard paths are just seen as the quickest way down with the greatest probability of a pint, or at the very least, a mug of steaming coffee at the bottom. The result of that is that the only routes i credit with any merit are the Horseshoe routes and the South Ridge. Oddly, it’s the ranger I’ve been up the most, although I’ve never walked it from the bottom. The Llanberis path tends to be a nice easy option for descent, but what a tedious path. Pyg and Miners are both reasonable paths, but those steps need a lot of concentration – especially as we’re just on a tourist path!

So, the Watkin was decided upon. Well, it was meant to be a South Ridge ascent and then we thought we could either descend the Watkin or to Pen y Pass.  But the strong winds meant that Bwlch Main might be a bit hairy, so the Watkin it was.

The path starts at the road junction in Bethania. There is a café literally a hundred yards towards Beddgelert, but today they were closed for a private function – some comfort for a cold, thirsty and wet walker. The track can be followed, but the new path is to the left and through the forest. This is not on the OS map, but Harveys have got it right. It is a pleasant start to the walk, but you are soon on the rocky man made path climbing up into Cwm Llan.

Cwm Llan I know quite well. I’ve descended the bottom part of the path a number of times when walking from Rhyd Ddu to Beddgelert, but never any higher. You’ll not fail to notice the many waterfalls of the river, which had today merged into one mighty torrent due to a very wet November that was continuing into December, so to speak. Despite the rain, the path is good, with no boggy sections; but plenty of water flowing along it. It is also nice and easy as it ascends to the old quarries, built to accommodate horse drawn carriages apparently by Sir Edward Watkin who built the path, for tourists. Coincidence that there’s also a slate quarry here? Doubt it!

There is a lot to see in the Cwm, including the old ruins of Plas Cwm Llan just above he major waterfalls. There are bullet holes on the side of this building as it had a function for commandos during WW2.  You also walk past the Gladstone Rock to get here, which commemorates the opening of the path in 1892 by the 83 year old Liberal prime minister, William Gladstone.

From the mine, the path now snakes its way upwards. It is difficult to see where the path goes when you look up the slope, but the path is always very easy and not really possible to lose. You get a look into the upper reaches of Cwm Llan from here, which has weird hillock formations that are grassed over waste heaps. You arrive at Bwlch Ciliau below Y Lliwedd quicker than you’d imagine. Probably as there is still a good 300m yet to climb and that it is the hardest section.

Now the next section has little to endear me to. Initially you are on a pleasantly narrow path above Cwm Llan, but soon this is to be replaced by an indistinct path up a sheer scree slope. It is an exceptionally loose route, and may well be one to be avoided if you are not confident of your skills or it is very poor weather. Today was the turn of very poor weather, and this made the scree wet and prone to slippage. Even large rocks were moving and there was scarcely any place to feel secure. It is difficult to explain where the path goes, and the map is next to useless. It’s where reading the ground ahead comes into its own. The best advice you can get on here is not to go far to the right towards the summit, and keep to the left, as the path joins the south ridge somewhat off to the south east of the top. You also need to be prepared to stop and think where you go next.  It is a blackspot for accidents, with one person having died here in 2006 and a few injured, so don’t underestimate it.

The final scree path is very steep, but takes you to a large flat area where you can rest upon solid ground again, and is marked by a large upright stone. Once any Elvis-legs are gone, it is but a mere pull up to the summit. Today it was empty. Both of people and of café. All that remains of Clough-Ellis’ creation (Frankenstein was a creation too remember, and look what happened to him/it) is a tiled concrete plinth. You need to skirt around the plinth, that is cordoned off by a large fence, where the contractors have not really accounted for the summit conditions as the fences have mostly collapsed.  We had seen but 3 people on the way up, and the rain and gales probably deterred the rest. It was also 2pm, leaving us only 2 hours to get down, so we knew that we had to get to the Miner’s track at Glaslyn by dark as that would be reasonably straightforward to follow with head torches.

The path to Llanberis, Snowdon Ranger and Pen-y-pass all merge for a while, until you reach the standing stone that marks the descent to the PYG and Miner’s tracks. The initial sections of which are steps. The path itself shouldn’t be difficult to follow, unless you have a walking companion who insists he knows the way and takes you the wrong way. Fortunately, the fork taken off the PYG takes us along an “alternative” path, past some interesting mine workings, and joins the PYG again. Down again on an “alternative” path, across a waterfall and we found ourselves just below the wooden post that marks the splitting or joining of the PYG and Miner’s Tracks. The path now takes you steeply to Glaslyn, mainly on man made steps – which are for once welcome as you’ve definitely had your fill of scree slopes today.
 
At Glaslyn, the path becomes wide and much easier. You can now relax a little, the path remains wide and easy all the way to Pen-y-pass, it used to be a road for the mines. There is little to see today, but you can imagine why the paths are so popular. The views across the lakes are spectacular, even on such a claggy day as this; you can see why Arthur is reputed to have disappeared across this lake. Descending from Glaslyn, you pass some further waterfalls, before arriving at Llyn Llydaw and the copper crushing mill of the Britannia Copper Mine. You cross a causeway over the lake before the track descends with no fuss to Pen-y-pass, where of course, the café was closed.

Height Profile of the route (image courtesy of Tracklogs)

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.