The named paths to the summit of Yr Wyddfa

Every route up the highest mountain in Wales has a name, a trailhead and a very different day attached to it, and the gap between the gentlest and the hardest is the gap between a family walk and a graded scramble. What follows sets each named path against the numbers that decide it: where it starts, how much height it has to make up, what is underfoot, and where the route has killed people. Distances and ascents are as the route descriptions publish them, and several of the paths pair up into circuits, so the way down need not be the way up.

Places in this collection

  • Snowdon Ranger Path — Thought to be the oldest route to the summit, named for the Snowdon Ranger Inn at its foot, now a YHA. It climbs the western side from Llyn…
  • Llanberis Path — The longest way up and the easiest, hugging a gradual ridge beside the mountain railway for nine miles there and back with 970 metres of as…
  • Miners Track — Built to carry copper down from the Britannia works, so the first stretch out of Pen-y-Pass is a broad, near-level track past the lakes bef…
  • Rhyd Ddu Path — The quietest of the six, climbing the western slopes from the village that gives it its name, along the ridge of Llechog. Route description…
  • Pyg Track — Technically the shortest of the main routes, which is another way of saying it gains its height quickly: roughly 3.1 miles for 700 metres o…
  • Watkin Path — It starts nearer sea level than any other route on the mountain, so the ascent is close to the full height of Yr Wyddfa in one go and the o…
  • Crib Goch — The 923 metre ridge is not a path to the summit so much as a traverse that happens to reach one: a knife-edge crest and a set of pinnacles,…

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