‘Among the rocks & precipices’
How a botanical quest made history at the top of Wales.
“The climbers are horror stricken by the rough rocky precipices on either hand.”
‘ Not only the summit, but the whole mass of the mountain was veiled in cloud.’ Sound familiar? It will to anyone who has summited Wales’ highest peak in a gloopy mist. They’re the words of Thomas Johnson, who makes the first recorded ascent of Snowdon on a claggy August 3rd 1639. A Yorkshire-born apothecary with a shop in London’s Snow Hill, Johnson had come to North Wales (‘our British Alps’, as he put it) on a plant collecting expedition. Guided by a local farm boy and accompanied by a friend and interpreter, he recounts a perilous climb in a pamphlet entitled The Itinerary of a Botanist: ‘Having climbed three miles, we at last gained the highest ridge of the mountain… Here the way was very narrow, the climbers are horror stricken by the rough rocky precipices on either hand.’
Assuming Bwlch Main (the ‘narrow gap’) is the tapering ridge described, Johnson ascended the Beddgelert Path. It’s a route known today as the Rhyd Ddu Path, which weaves its way up Yr Wyddfa’s west side, where a rare and dainty arctic-alpine flower called the Snowdon lily (gagea serotina) grows in rocky crevices. A relic of the ice age, it blooms alone from June to July. On reaching the top, Johnson did what everyone does now, and tucked hungrily into his packed lunch ‘among the rocks and precipices’.