Hiking Snowdon: The Rhyd Ddu Path Route

“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.”

Tim Cahill

Why do I enjoy packing so much? Maybe it’s the anticipation of what’s ahead. Maybe it’s because seeing Birmingham in the rear view mirror feels bloody brilliant. Tomorrow we are off to North Wales and I’ve been planning this trip with the guys for ages. We had got the campsite booked ages ago for this adventure but because of covid we never got here, what we did get was a voucher and finally almost a year and a half later we are finally getting to use it. The site is called ‘Snowdon Base Camp’ and the idea for the weekend is to go and get some scrambling practice. I’m going pass on some of the skills that I’ve learned with Bryan the instructor when we were up in the Lakes scrambling Harrison Stickle. The rest of the plan is to hike up Snowdon, a get in an easy practice scramble on Little Tryfan aka Tryfan Bach. The other thing I’ve been looking at doing for ages is Idwal Staircase which is around a grade 2 scramble, and that looks pretty epic. I’ve got all climbing stuff laid out on the bed with all my hiking stuff too and a printed list of what we / I will need. I’ve become far more organised with this packing lark over the years because generally I always forget to bring something, and most of the time its something important, like contact lenses or in one case just underwear. I take a look at the gear and tick it off making a mental note that I could have probably bought a car with all the cash I’ve been spending over the years on adventure gear. The next day we head out early and after picking up Ben we get some amazing views as we drive into North Wales. The weather is excellent and I don’t think we could have picked a better time to go! Even the drive is really enjoyable, though I think everybody enjoys driving towards a holiday.

Snowdon Base Camp

We pull up outside the Cwellyn Arms pub which is the place that own the campsite, it’s a traditional inn that looks like it has plenty of character. As we get our tent tags we also pick up a big back of logs and tinder for the fire pit. We drive to the campsite and it’s really well placed right next to the shores of Llyn Cwellyn the pitches are spacious and we notice the fire pit has a push over grill, so the camp stoves are probably not going to have to come out much this weekend. We all get our tents out of the cars and set up our little camp, I get the fire pit on the go and we use the stream next to us that’s feeding the lake to chill our beer. Richards brought what seems to amount to half a butchers shop worth of meat with him, which must be habit with him being a weightlifter so full on BBQ later, and who doesn’t like a BBQ?

We make sure we have all our stuff packed for the following day and ensure the ropes are properly wrapped up. Me and Rich end up uncoiling the ropes across half the campsite before managing to get them tied up properly and learning in the process neater rope management. Then we finally settle down for some beer and burgers. There are so many little little things is that make this experience awesome, having company of friends, banter and of course a roaring fire and bbq on this warm summer night. There’s something mesmerising about watching the flames of a fire, it’s one of the things that still feels wakes up whatever bit of our brain we got from prehistory. We pass the rest of the evening chatting and watching the flames like stone age TV, all in full caveman mode.

Snowdon Via The Rhyyd Du Path

I’ve been up on top of Snowdon many times already and so have Ben and Andy, but this time we are heading up because Rich has never been up there. Richards got a lot fitter than he was when we took him up the Old Man Of Coniston which is good, because apparently this routes a bit long. None of us have ever taken the Rhydd Du route before bit from what I’ve read it’s the most quiet route to the summit which is ideal, because we know that its probably going to be really busy up there. With hardly anybody leaving the country due to covid restrictions the amount of people getting into the outdoors has visibly gone up. Unfortunately this means that the more accessible places now get very crowded and there’s lots more litter appearing, which is a real shame. Why do some people come out to enjoy a beautiful thing to destroy it for others? That I will never understand. Anyway apparently the Rhydd Du is one of the paths with the best views so I’ve got my camera at the ready, especially with the excellent forecast from MWIS (that’s the mountain weather information service). Theres some great ridge walking on the way up to the summit and those of who have been to Snowdon before comment that it’s a nice interesting route. This path has a bit of history’s it was used as the first recorded ascent to the summit in 1639 by the botanist Thomas Johnson and was originally known as the Bedgellert path.

Because Snowdon is a mountain that is popular with tourists, especially due to the train that can take you from the town of Llanberis to just below the summit it’s often underestimated. Around 375,000 people hike to the summit every year, so it is a busy mountain however only around 1% require assistance from mountain rescue. However small that 1 percent may seem that’s still around 3,750 call outs a year. My personal feeling on it is that people seem to quickly forget that just because in some ways it’s more accessible that it’s still the second highest mountain in the UK. Also it’s still a mountain and it still has plenty of hazards, which not everyone seems to consider. We see plenty of people in footwear and clothing that if the weather were to suddenly change as it has want to do on mountains they would quickly find themselves in trouble. The most notorious area of Snowdonia is Crib Goch ridge, a place where many people find themselves in trouble and a lot of tourists have actually died. There’s also a strange mentality of ‘well my mate did it in a pair of trainers and no waterproof jacket so i’ll be fine’. Getting away with doing something badly and dangerously does not make it the right approach, it just means you didn’t fall foul of natural selection this time round. These days you are more likely to bump into a herd of unicorns than find people with much common sense. Standing at 1085m high, some people refer to the place as Mount Snowdon however the name Snowdon actually means ‘snow hill / snow mountain’ so that doesn’t really work because you are effectively calling it ‘Mount Snow Mountain’ . It’s welsh name is Yr Wyddfa Fawr, which translates to the Great Tomb or Great Throne in English. It has also been previously known as Carnedd y Cawr, or the Cairn of the Giant which feeds into one of the many myths and legends associated with Snowdon. We have plenty of stories of King Arthur in the UK and it’s said that Arthur killed the giant known as Rhitta here, a giant known for killing his enemies and sewing himself a cape made of the fallen mens beards. Which grimness aside sounds like he itchiest piece of clothing ever. It is said after Arthur killed him his men covered Rhittas corpse with large stones on the top of the mountain, which explains the ‘Cairn Of The Giant’ title. The views on our ascent as we progress along the ridge lines in this perfect weather are actually some of the most breathtaking I’ve seen in this area, and we all wonder out loud why we have never used this route before?

Summit Annoying But Closer To Heaven

The summit is obvious even if they hadn’t built a cafe on top of the place, there’s actual queues of people waiting to take a photograph at the trig point. Usually I come outdoors, for peace and quiet and to enjoy the scenery in relative peace. These ideas are totally murdered by the fact there’s crowds up here, waiting in huge lines to take a selfie with the trig point. Luckily all of us have seen this before with far less people in the way, and we wanted Rich to see the summit as he’s never been here before. From that point of view its totally worth it to see him enjoy his sense of achievement. And it is an achievement how healthy the dudes got in such a short period, it’s impressive. Only a few months back he was looking like he was going to have a heart attack on the side of the Old Man Of Coniston. He was so red he had started to resemble a radish with a viking haircut. I get at least some enjoyment from being on the summit again as I see much to my own probably twisted amusement that there’s a legend carved into the stones here that reads ‘Here you are nearer to heaven’ and you have to appreciate the double meaning of it being literally one step from a defibrillator on the other wall! After Rich garbs a quick summit selfie we make our way back down via the Snowdon Ranger path back to our camp ground and grab some well deserved beers.

Coming soon the next blog is titled: “Careful Where You Place Your Nuts! Practicing Scrambling Techniques On Little Tryfan”