The Nantlle Ridge

Fri 28 Oct 2016

We stayed at a new venue for this weekend of hill walking, Elen's Castle Hotel in the village of Dolwyddelan near Betws-y-Coed. We booked their bunk house accommodation; a small annexe next to the main hotel. We arrived just before 5pm, but there was a change to our usual travelling arrangements. Instead of travelling in one car, Vince/Jack and I each arrived in our own cars as the plan was to do the Nantlle Ridge for which we needed to station a car at the western end of the ridge so that we could get back to the start.

After sorting out all our gear we walked across to the main hotel for our evening meal. Paul ( a friend of Vince) and Rebecca met us in the bar afterwards to finalise the plans for tomorrow over a pint or two.

Sat 29 Oct 2016

We set our alarms for 6.00am – we needed to get away early to make sure we could get the car into the small lay-by near the village of Nebo. Breakfast consisted of porridge pots, bananas and cereal bars and a large mug of tea (can’t start the day without tea!). We’d loaded up the cars and were away by 7.00am. I just programmed in our destination on my sat-nav and followed its instructions, with Vince and Jack following. It did its usual trick of of taking us on a narrow and twisty road that it considered quicker – not fun on a dark and foggy morning. But it did its job and got us to our chosen remote spot at Cors y Llyn near Nebo. Luckily no-one else had the same idea so there was no problem parking in the small lay-by. Once I had put my boots on and Jack had got rid of his breakfast we travelled in Vince’s car to the car park at Rhyd-Ddu at the eastern end of the ridge. Paul and Rebecca arrived soon after us. Everything was going to plan so far, we did not even have to pay for parking as the pay-and-display machine was out of order.

The weather did not look very promising as we set off just before 9.00am. The cloud base was below the summits, as it was to remain all day, preventing us from having any views of this iconic ridge. Ninety minutes of effort brought us to the first summit, Y Garn. Gaining 440m in 2.5km, this was the toughest part of the day. The route to the next summit, Mynydd Drws-y-coed, involved some scrambling, which was fun but slightly spoilt by the wet and the poor visibility as we could not really see what we were climbing. We stayed on the top just long enough for the usual summit photos and then made a tricky descent on steep, slippery rock. I think it was here that both Jack and I stumbled, resulting in both of us needing some running repairs once we had got down to more level ground. A few more minutes and we were on our third summit of the day, Trum y Ddysgl.

A grassy descent south-west to the col followed by a grassy ascent and we were at the summit of Mynydd Tal-y-mignedd in 35 minutes of easy walking. The summit is marked by an enormous stone pillar which we contemplated climbing, but sensibly didn’t. Still none of the splendid views promised by the guide books; all we saw was the inside of a cloud.

A fence running down to Bwlch Dros-bern made for easy navigation towards our next objective, Craig Cwm Silyn. As we ascended from the col the daunting bulk of Craig Pennant loomed up out of the mist. This was promised as an entertaining scramble by our Gillham guide book, but as the mist made it difficult to see the route we decided to opt for the easier option and take the path that skirted around to the right, avoiding the scramble. Disappointing, but a sensible decision as we had already discovered how slippery these wet rocks were. The ground became a boulder field as we approached the top, our highest point of the day. We had earned a break by this time, so we settled down in the summit shelter to eat our lunch.

The route onward was very easy – head west on the summit plateau, then SW to a fence/wall that leads all the way to the summit of Garnedd-goch (another rocky top). From here to the final summit was the longest section of the day. Still following a wall south-west until we found the gap that allowed us to cross and head south to Bwlch Cwmdulyn. From the bwlch the obvious line to Mynydd Graig Goch would have crossed a couple of streams running down into the cwm, so to avoid these we opted to follow the wall SSW for 600m to the junction with another wall and then head directly up to the summit from there, thus avoiding the streams. We all fell silent as we paced out the 600m. Paul was closest, but I was pleased to only be about 15 metres off the mark. We took a bearing for the summit (which was out of sight in the mist) and marched off on easy grass towards it. The seventh and final peak of the day (yet another rocky one) was attained in about 20 minutes.And so to get down off the ridge and back to the car. We headed north-west and once we had negotiated the rocks protecting the summit the going became easy again on grass. We located a feint path which led us all the way down to the shores of Llyn Cwm Dulyn. As we descended we were pleased that we could see my car was still where we left it earlier, ready to take us back to our starting point. Looking back up to the ridge from the lake it was frustrating to see that Garnedd-goch was clear of cloud – how often does that happen on our walks? It was a bit of a tight fit to get all five of us and our rucksacks into my car, but we all managed to squeeze in for the drive back to Rhyd-Ddu in the failing light.

Summit	Height (m)	Status
Y Garn	633	Nuttall
Mynydd Drws-y-coed	695	Hewitt, Nuttall
Trum y Ddysgl	709	Hewitt, Nuttall
Mynydd Tal-y-mignedd	653	Hewitt, Nuttall
Craig Cwm Silyn	734	Hewitt, Nuttall
Garnedd-goch	700	Nuttall
Mynydd Graig Goch	610	Hewitt, Nuttall

See  all today's photos here