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Yet another weekend arrives and yet another outing to the wonderful world of North Wales and Snowdonia in particular. This is the second from last 8-pointer summit in North Wales for Dave and me. We are working our way from the top to the bottom on each area list knocking off the high summits before winter sets in.
We now have one in North Wales left, NW-007
Elidir Fawr is one we both have been putting off but it could not be avoided any more so off we went to complete it.
I managed to get Dave to agree to slip in Y Garn as I had not done that one this year and I could not miss the chance of an extra 8 points (Yes that’s 16 points Dave! Private Joke…)
Tryfan
Tryfan and the Ogwen Valley
You could see that this weekend everyone was making the most of predicted good weather, the car parks and lay-bys were filling up very fast. We parked by Ogwen Waterfall and preceded up the path by the Youth Hostel (SH649603) until we turned right at SH650602 on to the path that leads up to the North of Llyn Idwal (this path is more north of the lake path). We had to cross the stream at SH648601 and then continue up the path to the ridge at SH630597. The path is in quite good condition in most places and in others, they have dropped bags ready to rebuild it.
A moment of rest
By the time, we started on the steep section we were in t-shirts and the day had warmed up nicely.
We were listening on the hand held radios on the climb up and could hear Shining Tor being activated so we stepped up our speed to get to the activation zone on Y Garn in time to get the summit to summit.
Arriving on Y Garn at 10am I setup the 817 and made the contact to Shining Tor 3 contacts in total were made, 2E0OYG, M6MIJ and 2E0OCC and a QSY made the fourth contact with G4BLH. A few QRZ’s later and no replies I packed up and we moved on with the intention to reactivate it on the way back.
The last 2.27 miles to Elidir Fawr from Y Garn were quite easy. Along the way we were greeted by a proper mountain goat, the woolly kind, who was quite keen to stay on the path coming towards us right up to the last minute when he left the path in disgust and went round us making lots of noise.
He made it look so easy moving over the rocks.
Looking up to Elidir Fwar
The last part of the climb to Elidir Fawr is a bit of bolder hoping in places as the summit is covered in boulders. Watch out they can be quite slippery.
Dave setting up HF
Dave set up HF, as there was just enough space for him to run the wire out and I ran 2m FM and SSB
The views as usual were quite fantastic.
Yr Esgair
Marchlyn Mawr
Snowdon
On the trip up we noticed two stiles and we were looking for a different route back down but had not found a good marked route on the map hence the reactivation of Y Garn on the way back or that’s what we thought. However, the stile at SH625615 looked like it took us down to the A5 so as we both do not like backtracking we thought we would explore it.
It is not a very well marked path or well trodden. You could easily go off track in poor weather and the slopes suddenly end up as very steep long drops so you need to be cautious and use a map for the contours. From the stile at the top we could see a stile further away so we headed for that in a roundabout way to avoid the bog and waterfalls.
The drop off Yr Esgair
Foot of Yr Esgair
You go down a steep slope at the foot of Yr Esgair, looking up at Yr Esgair you could see the little specks of white and the noise of the mountain goats, they have no fear.
After a while, we met up with a well trodden path starting at the stile (SH629614) we had aimed for. This took us round the north side of Yr Esgair through Cwm-coch and to the wonderfully named “The Mushroom Garden”.
Most of the way we had an easy walk along a traversing route with the odd challenge in places to keep you on your toes. We had a few sheep that insisted on leading the way for a good while.
At SH637604 we met up with a waterfall and there we went East keeping it to our right and crossed it a SH640605 and then just made for the road back up to the parking spot.
The end of the day was greeted with fish and chips on Colwyn Bay beach….
In all we covered 7.17 miles and our total ascent was 3189ft and total decent was 3207ft give or take a bit.
73
Steve ‘n’ Dave