Tryfan and the Glyders

This weekend, Iain, Ed and I went to Snowdonia. Iain had mooted the idea of a weekend in Wales and I suggested that we climb Tryfan because I had heard good things about it from James. We were not disappointed. The steep, rocky scramble was just what I wanted, and was the perfect contrast to the flatlands of Cambridge that the other two needed. The weather was atypical: clear skies and sunshine all day. Our route was a clockwise loop, starting in the north, so the sun followed us round and left us asymmetrically sunburnt.


We did the traditional route, starting from the A5, up the north ridge of Tryfan (above), down the Bristly Ridge, then up Glyder Fach and Fawr before descending the ridge in between the two Glyders. The route was not very far in horizontal terms but it was full of scrambling. The scrambling verged on rock-climbing at one point as our route-finding went a bit awry amongst the heaped slabs of Tryfan's north ridge.

This is our geologist, Ed, who had lots to say about rocks, striation, foliation...

And this is Iain, who had nothing useful to say about rocks, but did have things to say about Queen of the South and Gretna.

This is the most scrambly part of the ridge. We made a bit hard for ourselves near the top but we were determined to get the full Tryfan experience.


And here is a view of the top of Tryfan. You can just see Adam and Eve at the top of the hill. I did the leap between the rocks, but Iain and Ed declined.

We skirted the tricky buttresses of Glyder Fach and climbed the steep scree slope to the left. The top of Fach is not so exciting, but it is odd-looking. It is a rough, rocky plateau with little tufts of rock splinters dotted around. The cantilever stone shown below is on the plateau.


Below, looking back from Glyder Fawr towards Tryfan and Glyder Fach.


And here is Snowdon in the distance, with Crib Goch visible.


After completing our tour of the Glyders, we descended a ridge to the east of Tryfan.

A grand day out!