good resting place!
The main line of attack is now established, and you have only to follow the scratch marks on the rocks and their rounded polished edges to stay on course. A short scramble leads to a tilted shelf distinguished by outcrops of dazzling white quartz. Over to the R is the famous Cannon Rock (easily spotted from the road) with Y Garn and Foel Goch gloriously portrayed beyond. The track meanwhile meanders over heathery, boulder-studded slopes to another shelf where Llyn Bochlwyd comes into sight for the first time and a soaring wall of gigantic boulders bars the way ahead. They may look formidable but experienced scramblers should have no trouble in shinning straight up, provided there is no snow about (GL34,1).
Looking from Tryfan N ridge across to Y Garn (photo Steve Lewis)
For something less taxing follow a cairned trail that twists round to the E. and descends briefly before regaining its composure to cross a gully. Leave it here and climb the gully R with a spell of easy foot and hand work. The top of the gully is the ‘notch’, just N of the N top, which is clearly visible from the road below and is where clambering directly up the rock wall would have brought you to.
More scrambling, high up on the W face, leads to a hollow separating the N top L from the main top R. There are easy scrambles up to each with the latter crossing over the W face gully route.
Stepping over the gully and staying with the path would bring you to a shallow cleft between the S top and main top, high above the E buttress, with an obvious finish for either.
Y Garn and Llyn Ogwen from Tryfan’s N ridge
Heather Terrace/S ridge (GL35)
An easier route to the top.
It is strange that such a manly giant as Tryfan should surrender itself so tamely to a thrust across its fearsome E face. Strange but fortunate, for how else but along the friendly Heather Terrace would the first-time walker not yet confident enough to take on the N ridge (or the family party with young children) get to enjoy this most exciting of Welsh mountains?
Park near the entrance to Gwern Gof Uchaf Farm. Follow a well-worn track that skirts the farm R before crossing a stile and making for open country in front of some smooth, tilted slabs known as Little Tryfan (a nursery for young climbers). The next objective, across a splash of bog, is the ribbon of white scree that scars Tryfan’s otherwise inviolate ramparts. It is laboriously steep and loose but a newer path avoids the worst (until it too suffers the same fate) by arcing round to the L.
Up the slope a jot more and you would be on the N ridge. Otherwise join the ledge L as it climbs aloft through boulders lavishly dressed in heather and bilberry. Below, the mottled-green loneliness of Cwm Tryfan; above, buttresses and gullies speckled with climbers’ reds and blues and an occasional glimpse of the wild goats that frequent these lofty heights.
Before long the angle abates and the terrace divides into two paths. Both trend W to a wall with two stiles that crosses the col separating the S and far S peaks. The lower path toils unadventurously up scree, while the higher gives a short but airy romp over the terminal boulders of the S ridge.
Heather Terrace is over; now for the S ridge. Scramblers looking for a challenge can take it head on, climbing virtually due N over huge blue-grey slabs of scabrous rock. Most folk will cross the wall and continue round the bend for 50, maybe 100yd, until a line of cairns reveals a more conventional scramble to the miniscule col separating the main and S tops.
Coming down is a bit more difficult. Starting off on 230° puts you on the cairned track just described, but staying on it is quite another story. In over 20 descents I doubt if I have ever followed the same line twice! I descended the S ridge twice in three days in July 1988. On the first occasion I reached the col in no time at all, calm and collected; two days later, using the ‘same’ route, I was stepping gingerly over yawning crevices, ensnared by awkward boulders, trapped by tiny cliffs just too high for comfort and forced to slide down shiny rock. It is magnificent scrambling nonetheless, and great fun!
Bochlwyd/S ridge (GL36)
A quick way down when time is of the essence.
Follow a band of scree falling away W from the col separating the S and far S peaks. It aims for the N tip of Bochlwyd and soon merges into a wet, squelchy path beside a stream before eventually passing between two little outcrops to join the miners’ track about 100yd short of the lake’s N shoreline. Halfway down you may notice a track creeping away E of N. This gives an alternative lead into the W face route.
Miners’ Track/S ridge (GL37)
Follow GL1 to Bwlch Tryfan. Do not cross the stiles; instead follow a well-used stony track heading N. This climbs a rocky knoll and then stays W of the wall before rising to the S col to finish as in GL35. Find time, if you can, to visit the far S peak to see the little tarn that lies cupped in its summit rocks.
West face (GL38)
The first hour is a brute; slow starters should look elsewhere!
On a grey, drizzly Ogwen morning the sight of the pink scree trail struggling painfully up the mountainside so very far above is as daunting as any I know. From the parking area at 660603 cross the stile, climb the steps and then make a beeline S for the stony path that curves round to the W of the knuckle known as Brag Rocks. (Do not stray L to the stone shoot that fills the gap between these rocks and Tryfan proper.) The best ways I know to survive the tumble of loose, wet bouldery debris that lies in wait are to enlist a congenial companion, or to concentrate on some knotty philosophical problem (or both!). The gradient relents when you at last cross a broad grassy saddle. But beware – this idyllic interlude is shortlived. The agony returns with unabated fury when the trail merges into the prominent scree shoot that culminates in the cleft between the N and main tops.
Now for the good news – at least for experienced hill-walkers. As you cross the grassy saddle look out for a faint path that breaks away to skirt the edge R, high above Bochlwyd. Stay with this until it embeds itself in the rock face at about 662594, then scramble up boulders W (GL38,1). A scattering of cairns looks reassuring, but there is no established path. It is very much a matter of trial and error in a setting of heathery thickets, fresh rock-bound pools and little rock walls reminiscent of the N ridge at its best (with the added zest that comes from novelty and isolation). Trend L and you should come close to a bull’s-eye on Adam and Eve; stray too far R and you will probably join one of the S ridge paths.
View across the Gwyder forest to the Glyders (photo Steve Lewis)
You can also reach the grassy saddle from Bochlwyd by following GL36 until you can exploit a gap in the crags (GL38,2).
Cwm Tryfan/S ridge (GL39)
This lonely cwm has the freshness and serenity Tryfan is so often denied.
Cwm Tryfan lacks nothing in grandeur, cupped between the terraced outcrops
