Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa)

PeaksEryri (Snowdonia), Galler,United Kingdom

The highest ground in Wales, its glacial bowls holding dark lakes and its ridges pared to blades, walked or ridden up by an 1896 railway.

September·Peaking now

Jun–Sep

The mountain at its fullest: all six paths open, the rack railway grinding to the summit, and the Snowdon lily flowering on its high ledges in June. It is also the busiest — start at first light, for the summit jams by late morning.

Year-round The knife-edge ridges and the two dark glacial lakes below them, Llyn Llydaw and Glaslyn, are here every day of the year. What comes and goes: the snow, the sea of cloud, the lily's flowering, the crowds and the railway.

Yr Wyddfa, the mountain the rest of the world calls Snowdon, is the highest ground in Wales at 1,085 metres, and the highest in Britain south of the Scottish Highlands. Glaciers did the shaping. They hollowed out the deep bowls — cwm in Welsh — that hold the dark lakes of Llyn Llydaw and Glaslyn, and pared the ridges between them down to blades. The sharpest of those, Crib Goch, is an arête barely wide enough to walk along, and with Garnedd Ugain and Y Lliwedd it closes the ring known as the Snowdon Horseshoe. The Welsh name means the burial mound, and legend is specific about who lies under the summit cairn: the giant Rhita, killed by King Arthur. Roughly 540,000 people reach the top each year, which makes this the busiest mountain in Britain. Six separate paths spread them out: the long Llanberis track, the old copper-miners' road past Llyn Llydaw, the steep Watkin Path from the south. You can also ride, because the Snowdon Mountain Railway has ground its way up from Llanberis since 1896 and is still the only public rack railway in Britain. Set off before dawn between October and February and the mountain often rises out of a white sea, the valleys drowned in cloud and the ridges standing above them like islands. The summit building, Hafod Eryri, opened in 2009 and shelters the last few metres. The trains stop from November to mid-March, when snow and hidden ice take the upper slopes. Since 2022 the park authority has used the Welsh names alone — Yr Wyddfa, and Eryri for the mountains around it. The rock underfoot began as ash and lava from underwater volcanoes about 450 million years ago.

Worth knowing

Good to know

A grey, drizzly car park can be the best sign of all — on inversion mornings the cloud sits low in the valleys, and you climb out of the murk into clear sky.
Crib Goch is a knife-edge scramble with lethal drops, not a footpath — rescue teams are called to it every year. If exposure worries you, take the Pyg or Llanberis path.
Half of all walkers come in June, July and August, and the summit jams between 11:30 and 14:30 — start at first light or come midweek and the cairn is almost yours.
From November into April the upper mountain is a winter one, hiding compacted ice you often cannot see until you are on it. Without an ice axe and crampons, choose another day.

Things to do

1
Climb the Pyg Track and look down on Glaslyn
The Pyg Track cuts along the wall of the cwm and delivers the mountain's best-known view from above: Glaslyn's deep blue, Llyn Llydaw behind it, and the ruined copper-mine buildings on the shore between them. From the summit cairn the whole horseshoe of ridges closes around the two lakes beneath you.
2
Climb out of the mist for the summits of Eryri as islands
On calm autumn and winter mornings the cloud settles in the valleys instead of on the peaks. Leave the car park by head torch, climb out of the mist, and watch the sun come up on a white floor with the summits of Eryri standing out of it as islands.
3
Ride the 1896 rack railway up from Llanberis
The carriages are pushed, not pulled, up a toothed rail for 7.6 kilometres — the only public rack railway in Britain, running since 1896. Walkers on the Llanberis path keep pace with you for stretches of the climb, and on a clouded day the train simply steams up into the grey.
4
See the whole Horseshoe from the valley floor
Long before you set foot on it, the mountain shows its full profile from the lakes on the road in from Capel Curig. The entire Horseshoe lines up on the skyline — Crib Goch, the summit, Y Lliwedd — and on a still morning the water doubles it. It is the view that explains the ridges you will later walk.
5
See the mountain turn white after a winter storm
Snow changes the scale of the place: the summit pyramid rears above a frozen Glaslyn and the cwm walls streak with ice. A winter ascent needs an axe, crampons and the skill to use them, but the drive up the Llanberis Pass gives you the white mountain for nothing.
6
Traverse the knife-edge of Crib Goch
The classic line onto the mountain is also its most serious: an arête of red rock where you move on hands and feet with the ground dropping away on both sides. It is a scramble, not a walk, and it takes nerve in wind — but no other approach puts the whole Horseshoe under your boots.

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Nearby

289 km