Snowdon

paulocon2

Hi all,

Thinking of taking a trip across the water to climb Snowdon over the summer.

Has anyone done this before? Thinking of ferrying over on the Saturday morning and cycling down to Snowdon (looks to be only about 30 miles) and camping over for the night after the walk.

Ferry looks pretty reasonable (around 60 euro return).

Would love to hear from anyone who has done it...

Mickeroo

paulocon2 wrote: »

Hi all,

Thinking of taking a trip across the water to climb Snowdon over the summer.

Has anyone done this before? Thinking of ferrying over on the Saturday morning and cycling down to Snowdon (looks to be only about 30 miles) and camping over for the night after the walk.

Ferry looks pretty reasonable (around 60 euro return).

Would love to hear from anyone who has done it...

Twice I've been in Wales and twice we had to give Snowdon a miss because of wind, we were going to do the horseshoe which is fairly exposed. We did Tryfan instead both times which is a great scramble if you get the time. Hope you get the weather for it!

K2

Did it in May 1992, fantastic - it snowed, so expect all types of weather. Go for the Crib Goch route, its rather nice

duckysauce

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01l9z10

starts tonight

Alun

Going there in a couple of weeks. Plan on doing the Carneddau and the Glyderau instead of the usual Snowdon. Anybody here done them before?

Pablo_

paulocon2 wrote: »

Hi all,

Thinking of taking a trip across the water to climb Snowdon over the summer.

Has anyone done this before? Thinking of ferrying over on the Saturday morning and cycling down to Snowdon (looks to be only about 30 miles) and camping over for the night after the walk.

Ferry looks pretty reasonable (around 60 euro return).

Would love to hear from anyone who has done it...

Did you do this? Thinking of exact same thing. cycle or bike on train to ferry. Prob late May.

paulocon2

Pablo_ wrote: »

Did you do this? Thinking of exact same thing. cycle or bike on train to ferry. Prob late May.

We didn't. Had a weekend lined up but the weather report for Wales was looking pretty bad so we ended up spending a day in the Mournes instead.

Still on my list of things to do so hopefully this year!

Alun

I did my trip back in September. We did a Sail Rail to Betws-y-Coed, which is a great place to stay, with plenty of pubs and eateries, and used the Sherpa shuttle buses to get around. They take a number of routes including to Pen-y-Pass which is one of the main access points for Snowdon, but also go down the Ogwen Valley as far as Llyn Ogwen which is great for the Glyderau or the Carneddau ranges too. We had weird weather ... cold, misty and drizzly to start with and on the tops, but dry and sunny on the descents at the end of the day .. .typical!

Enduro

I've cycled to Llanberis from the Ferry. It's hilly enough. Take the old road (A5, rather than A55). Safer to cycle through Bangor than take the D.C. bridge accross the Menai straights.

I stayed around for a week when I cycled over.. stag weekend in Llanberis which included climbing Tryfan (superb hillwalking). Was then joined by my GF and we cycle toured around to several of the MTB centres in Snowdonia. Finished the week by taking part in the Snowdon race (Up and down from Llanberis), and then cycling back to the ferry.

You'd need to be fit to cycle there and back and climb Snowdon all in the space of a 2 day weekend. Its definitely do-able though, and would be tremendously rewarding! You can cheat a bit by getting the train from Bangor to Hollyhead (and vice versa) if you want to save some energy. I reckon Llanberis would be the easiest place for you to stay if you're cycling. Tons of accomodation there, but book in advance.

The best hillwalk taking in Snowdon is the full horseshoe IMHO. As long as you get Crib Goch in it's gonna be a good one. Up and down from LLanberis would be the simplest to do if you're gonna do the short cycle based trip, as you've no addtional transport to worry about. Big well maintained path the whole way, going parallel with the railway. I've run that in less than 2 hours (immediately followed by MTBing up and down on two occasions).

fergalr

Alun wrote: »

I did my trip back in September. We did a Sail Rail to Betws-y-Coed, which is a great place to stay, with plenty of pubs and eateries, and used the Sherpa shuttle buses to get around.

Don't have a car, and was thinking about doing some walking in snowdonia again. I didn't realise that there were sherpa buses that made it so accessible, that's good to hear.

Enduro wrote: »

I've cycled to Llanberis from the Ferry. It's hilly enough. Take the old road (A5, rather than A55). Safer to cycle through Bangor than take the D.C. bridge accross the Menai straights.

A few years ago, I decided to cycle to plas-y-brenin to do a kayaking course; had my wetsuit, booties and everything in paneers. I wouldn't recommend the cycle to snowdonia from the ferry though; I remember doing it in the pouring rain, and with heavy vehicles passing by; even though I took the A5, it wasn't a nice cycle, would probably try take the train in future.

Downhill on the way back is very fast though.

I really recommend scrambling on Tryfan to anyone going to snowdonia, excellent fun.

Alun

fergalr wrote: »

I really recommend scrambling on Tryfan to anyone going to snowdonia, excellent fun.

It probably is, looked a bit to hairy for me though.

Also, according to the owner of my B&B who was a local Mountain Rescue Team member, it's the source of a large number of their call outs, mainly people who've tried it and then got stuck or 'crag fast'. There was even a recent case of a tourist who went missing while climbing it and has never been found, the jagged slopes off to each side make it almost impossible to find a body that fell from the top apparently.

fergalr

Alun wrote: »

It probably is, looked a bit to hairy for me though.

Also, according to the owner of my B&B who was a local Mountain Rescue Team member, it's the source of a large number of their call outs, mainly people who've tried it and then got stuck or 'crag fast'. There was even a recent case of a tourist who went missing while climbing it and has never been found, the jagged slopes off to each side make it almost impossible to find a body that fell from the top apparently.

That's surprising to me; I've been up Tryfan 2 or 3 times, once from the south, and twice from the north. Going from the north was scrambly, but nothing that I would have thought was particularly exposed or particularly dangerous. Certainly I did nothing at the level of Crib Goch, which Enduro mentioned earlier. I felt engaged, but very comfortable on it. Now maybe we were taking easy routes - there was a lot of rock faces that I thought it'd be easy to get into trouble on.

There were loads of people on Tryfan, one of the days I was on it; families etc. Maybe its popularity leads to a lot of accidents. Obviously accidents can happen anywhere, and it is steep and rocky enough that you have to be careful, but I'd have thought the routes we took would be well within the comfort zone of an experienced walker.

I did the traditional step between the two stones at the top ('adam' and 'eve'), which I felt that was the most dangerous and stupid part of the day.
Overall, Tryfan is one of my favourite mountains, and I'd recommend it to walkers/scramblers with the right level of experience.

Alun

It's possible that it looks less imposing close up than from a distance I suppose. I don't have that great a head for heights despite being a seasoned walker, and doing the Adam and Eve jump would be right out of the question

josip

We're driving over Friday, staying in Llanberis and hopefully climbing Snowdon via Crib Goch on Saturday. Does anyone know if we can get a good OS map covering Snowdon somewhere in Dublin? If not, then where would be best over there to get one? I'd prefer to have it by Friday and not spend any time on Saturday looking for it.

Alun

Great Outdoors would be your best bet I'd say. There's a 1:25k Explorer map of the area, the one you want is OL 17 which covers most of the National Park.

P.S. If you want to explore the area beforehand go to http://www.getamap.ordnancesurveyleisure.co.uk/ Skip the registration process, and when You've zoomed in on the area you want click on the 'Leisure' button and you'll see the 1:50k and 1:25k coverage if you zoom in far enough.

josip

Thanks for the link Alun. I've checked with the Great Outdoors but they only have a 1:50k. We'll probably be able to pick one up in Llanberis on Friday

Alun

Try some of the other outdoor places in Dublin too ... Basecamp on Middle Abbey St., 53 Degrees North in Carrickmines or Blanchardstown, Outdoor Adventure Store on Upper Liffey St. and I think Eason's does maps too.

Enduro

Joe Brown's in LLanberis (right in the middle) will have everything you could need. There is a nice Irish lad working there too (Brian) who knows the area well at this stage!

Carawaystick

Also the Ridges are so narrow and steep, you won't need a map, the route will be obvious....

josip

Indeed they are. We got our map in Joe Brown's at 9 just as they were opening. Surprised they didn't open a little earlier on a Saturday morning given their clientele would mostly be early risers.

There's really little need for a map when climbing Snowdon, ridges or otherwise. It's harder to find your way up Croagh Patrick. We baulked at Crib Goch, it was very windy even down on the Pyg track. Didn't regret it when we saw many other more capable looking "scrambler types" also taking the Pyg.