Going Sc - Rambling Mad

We had a slow start to the day, we had wanted to do some climbs at Dinas Cromlech after our two long days however the weather wasn’t playing ball it was drizzly and the clouds were low and not budging. Climbing in the drizzle wasn’t a cheerful prospect so on a Mike whim we drove around to the Ogwen valley to do a climb just up from Llyn Idwal, Sub Cneifion Rib V-Diff.

The climb wasn’t too spectacular but enjoyable, it got annoying when I almost couldn’t get some of Mike’s gear out of a crack again (I had been forced to leave some up Lliwedd whoops) however the climb was still better than trudging up the steep slope to the scramble. We got to the top and wondered across to begin the scramble Cneifion Arete Diff. Mike had said that it was a grade 3 scramble…. Actually the guidebook made no mention of that and it was an actual graded route only a diff but still. We crept up the ridge, well Mike did, his purest ethic showing itself again. I took the easier sections to climb up as it felt quite intense, feeling very vertical and the rock was wet so I was completely relieved and satisfied when we made it to the top.

From there because we’d decided we hadn’t had enough scrambling for the day we walked up and onto Gribin ridge which is a grade 1 scramble it was pretty enjoyable even though by this point we couldn’t see much as we were completely within the cloud. The ridge ended on the top of Bwlch Y Ddwy and then we….walk is not the right word because the whole of the Glyder summits are a like a huge fortress of jumbled stone, we were more like ants scuttling over cracked paving stones as we scrambled up and down towers of stone over the summit of Castell y Gwynt and finally up onto Glyder Fach.

It wasn’t immediate straight down after the summit we found the famous Cantilever first and then we began our descent. Mike had thought to go down by way of Bristly Ridge (grade 1 scramble) but I was quite tired being the party pooper I am and I knew it take me a while to climb down the ridge so we settled for the very loose scree slope to the side where we popped out next to Tryfan. We plodded our way down the path heading back to Ogwen Cottage accompanied by a few men who apparently were from the new Surf Snowdonia surf lake just built at Dolgarrog. They were slightly bigheaded bragging how they had planned to go up Bristly Ridge and do all the Glyders and Y Garn blah blah but the weather had came in so they went to Glyder Fach and back down; bearing in mind it was around 5pm that must have taken them ages. They liked to talk quite loudly on the way down behind us of various sections of Tryfan trying to sound like know-it-alls if you’re reading this guys we weren’t so impressed!

Our bad hair-dos at the top!!!

We raced back to the car for a well-earned tin of chicken korma in my case, 3 tins of various things for Mike (I’m pretty sure he could have eaten more as well!!!) and another reclined car seat camp out at the Snowdon viewpoint.