hangin' in the crib

Part two of our summer holiday was spent in north Wales, in particular at this campsite in north-western Snowdonia a couple of miles from Caernarfon. But what is there to see up there? Well, a variety of things as it happens but mainly GREAT BIG MOUNTAINS UP THE FREAKIN WAZOO. We'd hit upon north Wales as it was a place this collective group hadn't been before and it seemed to me like it might provide a means of transitioning from the kid-centric low-level (though delightful) camping trips we'd been doing since popping out five kids between us - Cornwall, Buckinghamshire, Dorset - to something that might perhaps include some more ambitious expeditions. No expectation of getting back to the glory glory days of pre-parenthood full-blown Munro-bagging but I'd hope we might aspire to bag one here and there in future among doing other things. 

To put it another way, I'd spotted an opportunity to drag at least some of our group up a mountain at some point during the holiday and fully intended to seize it with both hands. In fact I thought: well, given that we've only got one shot at this let's super-size that mofo and do the Snowdonia walk I really want to knock off my bucket list: the full Snowdon Horseshoe. 

The disadvantage of this is that it was not a route everyone could be expected to be able to do, nor indeed want to do, and so I was fully mentally prepared to be thwarted at any point up to and including the day of the walk. It's not just people, of course - while we're in the grip of a prolonged period of warm dry weather I hadn't ruled out the weather gods deciding to blanket the whole mountain in cloud and rain for the day, just to fuck me over. 

A brief bit of scene-setting regarding the route: this is the route up and over the Crib Goch arête, around to the summit of Snowdon and then down again via the subsidiary peak of Y Lliwedd, making use of sections of the Pyg and Miner's tracks to get from and to the start point at Pen-y-Pass. I'd never done it before despite having been up Snowdon several times - I couldn't say exactly how many but it's at least six, as follows:

• with my Dad in what was probably the mid-1990s; up the Pyg and down the Miner's, no photos nor any particular recollection of the walk or the weather, quick stop for a pint of Bass in the Pen-y-Gwryd hotel (after which the Pyg track is probably, but not definitely, named) afterwards, below a pair of Sir Edmund Hillary's Everest boots in a glass case above the bar (I see I mentioned that here)
• with my then-girlfriend Anne in spring of 2000, Pyg/Miner's again, foggy at the top
• 
  Three Peaks training run in summer of 2006, a month or so before the actual challenge. Glorious weather, up the Snowdon Ranger, down the Rhyd Ddu, straight into the pub
• the Three Peaks itself, early July 2006, glorious weather again, Pyg/Miner's for speed, brisk jog down the last section to be sure of being back within the 24 hour limit, bottle of bubbly by the minibus in the car park and then a pint in a pub down the road which I think might have been this one in Capel Curig
• with Hazel, late summer 2008, bit misty and drizzly, up the Snowdon Ranger again, down the Rhyd Ddu again, straight into the pub again
• with Hazel's BNI group for a charity challenge, February 2009, up the Pyg track, snowy and icy at the top, down a combination of the Llanberis path and just following the railway line

Anyway, I'm glad to be able to say that it all worked out beautifully: glorious weather, two distinct groups heading for the summit by two different routes who managed to meet up briefly at the summit, and then again at the car park just in time (literally, a couple of minutes to spare thanks to some more jogging of the last half-mile or so) to get the last Snowdon Sherpa bus back to Caernarfon to pick up the cars.

Much has been written elsewhere about the Crib Goch traverse by those much more knowledgeable and experienced than me, and there is plenty of YouTube footage available if you want a preview before deciding whether it's for you or not. One caveat: lots of YouTube mountain footage is filmed using a fish-eye GoPro-type camera, probably helmet-mounted, which makes it look unbelievably high and narrow. Another caveat: lots of Crib Goch footage in particular has clickbait titles like BRITAIN'S DEADLIEST RIDGE!!! It's important to be clear that people genuinely do die up there - or, rather, they start up there, endure a brief transitional period after which they are not up there any more, and then die - but I'd say as long as you're pretty fit, comfortable with hands-and-feet scrambling and have a good head for heights there really shouldn't be a problem. I would, as an aside, be interested to see whether the casualty rate has gone up since the advent of people going up there with cameras making YouTube videos about it, it being really important to concentrate on what you're doing and where you're putting your feet.

The walk is basically in a few distinct sections:

• 
  A couple of kilometres up the Pyg track from the car park to Bwlch y Moch, where the Crib Goch path splits off. There is lots of signage here intended to prevent people straying onto the Crib Goch track thinking it's the Pyg track, which you would have to pretty dim to miss, but which I'm sure people occasionally do nonetheless.
• The first section up onto Crib Goch is a fairly relentless upward scramble up a big rocky pyramid, not particularly exposed but steep and strenuous, and with some scanning of the wall of rock in front of you required to see where the best scrambling route is. In general, and this applies to the whole horseshoe route, you can usually see a light-brownish trail among the grey rock if you look hard enough which shows where people have been before you.
• You the arrive at the first mini-summit and the narrowest section of ridge is visible in front of you: a flat section to the true summit of Crib Goch at 923 metres (3028 feet) and then a gradually downhill section to the first of the pinnacles that occupy the end of the ridge. You can walk along the top for quite a bit of it but there are sections where dropping off the crest and using it as a handrail is the best approach; in general if you're going to do this the left side of the ridge offers the best footholds and is less murderously steep and exposed.
• It is possible to just scramble over the top of the first couple of pinnacles but the usual alternative route is to drop slightly off the crest to the left to skirt round the base. The key move then is to swing back to the right through the gap before the third pinnacle to ascend some rocky steps up over the top of it.
• You then descend to a wider grassy area for a short while which affords a good opportunity for a sit down and a pork pie.
• There is then some more scrambling, not dissimilar to the first section, to gain the summit of Garnedd Ugain, at 1065 metres (3494 feet) the second-highest summit in Wales, and from there a broad rocky plateau leads to the point where most of the main paths up Snowdon (and the mountain railway) converge and thence to the summit area where you can have a wee, buy an ice-cream (or even a beer), and spend around twenty minutes queueing for a selfie at the summit toposcope.
• You then head past the summit building, in the opposite direction to 95% of people, and descend to the point where the Rhyd Ddu and Watkin paths diverge, head left along the Watkin path and almost immediately down a long and steep descent which has some nice rocky steps for the first half but thereafter is tricky and loose underfoot and requires some care. As the path levels out it takes a sharp right turn into another steeply downhill section, at this point Horseshoe-ers go straight on and up a bouldery scramble (similar to the ones on the first section of Crib Goch and Garnedd Ugain but less exposed than either, unless you stray too near the cliffs on the left) to the summit of Y Lliwedd. There are actually two summits in quick succession but the first one is slightly higher at 898 metres (2946 feet).
• Having traversed both Y Lliwedd's tops you then start a long gradual descent which passes through a gap in the crags and drops down to the lakes and the Miner's Track, which will take you back to the car park.

Anyway, the story of our day in a nutshell was that we had perfect weather: sun, no wind, no cloud, everyone did the walk they wanted to do and were best-suited to do, the two groups met up briefly at the summit and then again at the car park at the end, although the Horseshoe group had to re-enact the last bit of our 2006 Three Peaks expedition by jogging the last half-mile or so to be sure of being back in time for the last bus and a quick wee before getting on it. Our group absolutely smashed their challenge; Alys in particular being absolutely in her element and leading the way most of the way round wearing a huge grin on her face, only dropping back a bit on the later stages of the descent when her knees started to hurt. Nia was slightly nervous right at the start of the most exposed section but was fine once she got started. Summit photos from Crib Goch, Garnedd Ugain and Snowdon (the first two are selfies so feature my grinning mug prominently; sorry about that) are below.

I had been a bit concerned about the number of people we'd be sharing the ridge with, as having to pass on the narrow bits is awkward - we deliberately did the walk on a Friday rather than a Saturday to avoid some of the weekend crowds, and overall Crib Goch was fairly quiet. We probably met 15-20 other people in total over the course of our end-to-end traverse of the ridge; obviously there were a lot more people at the summit, most of whom had arrived by other routes. Like Striding Edge, the general convention is that you use Crib Goch as a means of getting to the summit of Snowdon rather than as a means of getting off afterwards, but there were people going in both directions. People do take dogs up there, and occasionally die while attempting to rescue them, but I don't recall seeing any when we were there; there was certainly no repeat of the two guys I met on Striding Edge walking a dachshund along the crest of the ridge.

So how does it compare to other UK ridge routes? The obvious comparison is with Striding Edge, and it's similar in many ways; Crib Goch is a bit narrower, but the main difference is the exposure, which is much more extreme on Crib Goch even while the actual technical demands of the scrambling aren't that complex. You can convince yourself that a fall from Striding Edge might be survivable, one from Crib Goch, especially off the north side of the ridge, would not be. My memories of the only other two comparable things I've done, the Càrn Mòr Dearg ridge round the back of Ben Nevis and the Black Cuillin, are dim and distant enough (probably around 1999) to probably not be very reliable, but I don't recall Càrn Mòr Dearg being as narrow or as exposed as Crib Goch. There are supposedly routes navigable by the experienced walker/scrambler that are more extreme than Crib Goch, like the Aonach Eagach ridge in Glencoe. Maybe next time....

So, to summarise, a fantastic day, one of my favourite ever days out on the mountains, absurdly proud of my girls (and of Huwie, who led the Pyg/Miner's group up with some motivational singing), highly recommended to anyone but do your research and assess your own fitness, competence and inclination first. 

The other thing about Crib Goch is that it is a peak in its own right, and a Welsh 3000 at that, so if you have aspirations (as I do) to bag all of them (14 or 15 depending which list you adhere to) then you will have to do the ridge traverse at some point. The horseshoe walk incorporates all three in the Snowdon range (Garnedd Ugain and Snowdon itself are the other two), which is nice, the rest comprise five in the Glyder range (of which I have done four, Elidir Fawr being the odd one out) and the Carnedd range, none of which I have ever been up BUT fully intend to have a crack at in future. 

Route map and altitude profile are below. The whole walk took us around nine and a half hours, although we did have a fairly lengthy sojourn at the top meeting up with people, buying ice cream and getting Alys a souvenir key-ring for her collection.