Simon Ingram
enchains a trio of Welsh scrambles to create what could be the single best day (and one of the nastiest descents) in the Principality‘s peaks
This is going to get emotional. There will be reunions. Missed dinners. Ticks. Moans. Failed camps. Big drops. Brainmelting views. Leaps of faith. All in less than 12 hours. And to top it off, I’ve got toothache. I hate toothache. It’s the worst ache. You need to distract yourself so you don’t go mad. With a TV show. A stiff drink. Or three of the best scrambles in Britain, back-to-back...
Re: the latter, I’m not exaggerating, before you start. The first of these asserts its status from Rhydlydan – a good 20km away – when the A5 throws a view of the Snowdonian mountains at you in a sudden, inbreath-taking tableau. There stand the four big groups of hills squared up like an identity parade: Snowdon, Moel Siabod, Glyders, Carneddau. And a frilly weirdo in the middle, like a flamenco dancer in a line of boxers: Tryfan.
If Tryfan is news to you, this is already decided; you need to go, right now. This whole mountain is like a shrine to everything that’s addictive when it comes to climbing mountains. It’s the biggest little mountain in Britain – over 3,000ft high, and it really doesn’t mess about. Its north ridge is an absolute hoot of a route that climbs like a ladder from the floor of the Ogwen Valley, and just as sharply down again on every other side, giving the peak a near free-standing profile. Then on top, those pesky pinnacles and the famous jump between them; just tilted, polished and far enough apart to give you the horrors, and to split conquistadors selfconsciously down the middle into those that jump and those that don’t. This mountain sears the eye and scars the soul: whatever your experience there, you never forget Tryfan.
The problem with Tryfan, if you can call it a problem, is there isn’t enough of it. By the time you get to the top you’re just getting loosened up and brave, and then you’ve got to come down again. Only, you don’t have to come down again. With barely a shuffle on the map, you can crank things up a notch. And then after that, you can crank it up another. But be patient; we’ll get to that.
What this is, is an enchainment – a linear route consisting of three particularly long, particularly good scrambles, all of them different to each other and none of them beyond the reach of anyone comfortable with Grade 1. It’s possible. It’s awesome. And while you might make a complete pig’s ear of it like we did, you’ll still have a lot of fun.
But anyway. We three arrive in the Ogwen Valley to tentatively tremendous weather. Above the pile of raked grey splinters that Tryfan resembles from beneath, the sky is the colour of tin. But as we begin to climb, luminously optimistic blue begins to gather behind it, then seep into it.
I’m with Trail’s resident Glyders ambassador Ben (“I love the Glyders,” he says, every five minutes...) and my old mountain pal Jim, whose fixation on Tryfan was about as complete as was possible for someone who hadn’t actually ever set foot on it. I hadn’t been on the hill with Jim for ages, but over the years he’d occasionally text me: “Just back from Snowdonia,” he’d type. “Nearly climbed Tryfan again.” From what I could gather he’d stood at the bottom and frowned at it quite a lot. So, a big day for him.
I’m enjoying myself too. Taking someone up Tryfan for the first time is great, because you get the opportunity to display your mountain skills without actually doing anything intrepid. The way the north ridge is put together means you can take just about any route leading upwards and eventually you’ll end up on the crest of the mountain, through just about any degree of difficulty you could want. All you need to remember is to keep a vague eye on where the mountain is going and not to climb up anything you can’t climb down. So I can casually chip, “this way,” “up here,” “this looks interesting,” “how about this?” and look like I am effectively making a first ascent, safe(ish) in the knowledge that pretty much every route you take will spit you out in the same place further up the hill.
That you never seem to climb Tryfan the same way twice makes it even more peculiar. Whatever your route, it somehow always manages to land you beside one of the hill’s many must-snap photo stops. Just here: the Cannon Stone. It’s irresistible: a shimmy up a great big finger of rock pointing out over the valley. It looks impossibly precarious in pictures, but isn’t really.
You notice new things each time, too – as if your brain sizes up a different attribute of the mountain with each ascent. I am clearly on my ‘camping’ ascent: in that I see everywhere hitherto unnoticed little clearings big enough to accommodate a tent or two. Here is one by the Cannon Stone. Another lying up the ridge. There is even one just by the summit. This is all very tempting...
The best thing about Tryfan, though, is just how accommodating it is. I wouldn’t take a four-year-old up here, but for anyone who is basically capable of clambering and balancing, this mountain is golden. The rock is grippy and compliant, and geologically cleaved in two – one half rhyolite, one half granite, both of which make for perfect scrambling ground. This thing is one big climbing frame – benevolent and massive, massive fun. Until you get to the top. Then the damn thing turns on you!
The first thing you feel as you reach the summit is the immediate exposure. The drops creep up on you, almost unnoticed as you absorb yourself with the upward climb. But then, all of a sudden, they’re everywhere. Around you, in front
of you, below you – and you suddenly experience that weird carbonation of excitement and worry. It’s OK, you think. The hill is wide, the rock is safe, you think. But then…
“Wouldn’t like to be up here in the mist,” says Jim. “Easy to… go astray.” It would be, too – leaning rock splinters, sudden drops, rock that resists pathways – it’s like a labyrinth up here and you need to take care. There isn’t a trig point, either. But on this mountain, you really don’t need one.
The twin pinnacles of Adam and Eve are the kicker; about as uncanny a mountain novelty as you can get, and more remarkable for the fact that they mark this one’s very summit. Jumping the gap between them is something you’re obliged to do, if your nerves are up to it. Climbing onto them is hard enough – I’m not a tall man – and then, standing aloft, you suddenly realise that… well, you’re standing on top of a tilting flagstone-sized pinnacle on top of vertiginous mountain, facing an even smaller, more tilting pinnacle over a three-foot gap and someone you don’t know down there is suggesting you jump.
“You have to jump back again, too. Upsets the universe if you don’t,” he says. I wonder if this guy has been sitting here next to Adam and Eve all day, heckling would-be universe-tippers, like a third pinnacle. I wonder if his name is Steve... y’know, rhymes with Eve...
I’ve never done this before. It’s not that windy, so I have a go. My arms flail. I feel a bit sick. Done once, done again. The universe abides. I climb down, and quickly. Jim watches from below, arms folded, contented smile on his face. I ask the obvious question and he shakes his head. “Nothing to prove,” he says. I’m about to make fun of him. Then I remember he used to be a fighter pilot.
Next up, Tryfan’s obnoxious bigger brother. From the short walk between Tryfan’s south peak and the col at its base, Bristly Ridge doesn’t look up to much, other than looking very steep – which things tend to when nose-on.
Jim decides he still has nothing to prove and wanders up the Miner’s Track to take some pictures back towards the ridge. He’s smart, and actually has the best view from where he is – looking back towards Bristly Ridge from Glyder Fach’s east flank, from where this ridge earns its name. We would see later in Jim’s pictures that the ridge is quite extraordinarily barbed in profile – and not the usual Snowdonian splinteriness, either. The rock that cuts the sky on the crest of Bristly Ridge is angled and frilled like some mythological horse’s mane – horned, twisted and curly – the sort of strange, physics-defying form that looks like it might blow given a stiff breeze.
Of course, it doesn’t look like that up close. It’s actually quite confined in its lower reaches. But while Tryfan has an anything-goes kind of architecture, Bristly Ridge’s choices are somewhat more prescriptive. A gully on the right, or a gully on the left. We take the one on the right which, unbeknown to us, is the harder of the two. “Sinister Gully doesn’t sound good.” “Well, the other one is Dexter Gully. ‘Left’ and ‘right’ in Latin.” “Which one’s which?” This question isn’t as daft as it sounds. Sinister (sinistra) and dexter are directional in Latin, but also denote the two sides of a shield in heraldry – which are left and right as viewed by the shield holder, not the miscreant coming at them with a joust or whatever. This has led to some confusion, but on Bristly Ridge, Sinister and Dexter mean left and right, as you look towards them, not outward.
Dexter Gully is actually a fairly friendly bit of very steep scrambling. Holds just appear in front of you as if passed down, and you end up grinning like a crazy person as you escalate it with speed and ease. I do, anyway – and that’s not bravado. Heights have never been my friend, but I love every second.
It really is the best time of day to be up here, too – with evening sunlight drifting over us through the gaps in the pinnacles, warming the rock, and just making the whole thing so pleasantly exhilarating. My only wobble – in the truest sense – comes at Great Pinnacle Gap, well into the section of the ridge where the broad start sharpens into a crest. Suddenly, I reach something I don’t know what to do with: a downclimb into a gap that looks hard, or impossible. In such cases I find it’s handy to have
“THE ROCK OF BRISTLY RIDGE IS FRILLED LIKE SOME MYTHOLOGICAL HORSE’S MANE – HORNED, TWISTED AND CURLY – THE SORT OF STRANGE, PHYSICS-DEFYING FORM THAT LOOKS LIKE IT MIGHT BLOW GIVEN A STIFF BREEZE.”