On Cambrian and Cumbrian Hills: Pilgrimages to Snowdon and Scafell

by Henry S. Salt

But crippled as Snowdon is, we may still find on it one incomparable excursion, the circuit of the great hollow of Cwm Dyli by the ridges of Lliwedd and Crib Goch, which, if we can shut our eyes to the abominations of slag-heap and railroad that must be passed on the way, will hold its own, even against the Glyder and Tryfan, as the grandest mountain walk in Wales. Lliwedd itself, which rises so finely from the shores of Llyn Llydaw, is a beautiful object from every side but the south, and may be described as a sort of glorified Skiddaw—as if the Cumbrian hill, while losing none of the graceful lines and curves that distinguish it, had been cut down, on its front, from a mere steep of shale and heather into a mighty precipice. Along the edge of this rock-face, the haunt once of the wild goat, now of the cragsman, and over the twin peaks, with their bird’s-eye views of Cwm Dyli and its two lakes on one side, and the lakeless Cwm Llan on the other, we have an ideal route to Snowdon.

Arrived there, what a scene awaits us, especially if the train has just steamed in with its latest freight of trippers! For consider on what ground it is that we stand—the very summit of the sacred hill, the shrine of Snowdon, once the pride and stronghold of the Cymry. Thus wrote the historian Camden, more than three centuries ago:

We may very properly call these mountains the British Alps, for besides that they are the highest in all the island, they are also no less inaccessible by reason of the steepness of their rocks than the Alps themselves; and they all encompass one hill which, far exceeding the rest in height, does so tower its head aloft that it seems not merely to threaten the sky, but to thrust its summit into it. It harbours snow continually, being throughout the year covered with it, or rather with an aged crust of snow; hence the British name of ‘Craig Eryri,’ and the English “Snowdon.”

We smile at the hyperbole of these ancient writers, but even now, in these days of its utmost wrong, the natural sovereignty of Snowdon stands confessed; so truly imperial is its form, and so symmetrically do its superb ridges radiate from the parent peak. Its everlasting snow was a fable; but deep drifts may be seen as late as midsummer in its northern gullies, and in the winter months, when the zigzag tracks are deeply covered, it is often no easy matter, for any but trained climbers, to make the ascent from Capel Curig; there are times when the high cornice of snow, overlapping the brow of the ridge at the head of Cwm Dyli, offers a formidable barrier.

It was well that so noble a mountain, rich in legend and tradition, should continue to stir public sympathies[12] and draw pilgrims to its shrine; the pity is that the shrine itself should have been despoiled—not, be it noted, by the number of its votaries, which was great even before the middle of the last century, when the mischief was still undone, but by the hideous “accommodation” provided for them. It would not have been difficult, with a little care and forethought, to build a mountain hut in a sheltered place a few feet below the top of the ridge, where it would have been practically unseen; unfortunately what was done, about seventy years ago, was to erect some unsightly buildings on the very summit, and these have lately been enlarged into the present Summit Hotel, of which it need only be said, as was said of the nose of a certain philosopher, that “language is not vituperatious enough to describe it.” I never see the place without thinking longingly of the last scene in Poe’s story, The Fall of the House of Usher, where a certain accursed mansion obligingly topples over and disappears in a neighbouring tarn; might it not be hoped, then, that on some wild winter night, when these buildings are untenanted, they would be blown by a south-west hurricane over the edge of Clogwyn Garnedd into the waters of Glaslyn below? But such wishes, however pious, are unavailing; to take a cup of tea in the refreshment-room, in preparation for the advance to Crib Goch, is the wiser course.

It is pleasant to exchange the crowded mart on Snowdon for the space and solitude of Carnedd Ugain, its high northern shoulder which overlooks the Llanberis side; but though solitude will now be ours, space must soon begin to fail us, as the broad expanse dwindles and contracts to a mere rocky curtain. A glorious ridge it is that we enter on, which under the two names of Crib-y-Ddysgl and Crib Goch, but in reality one and indivisible, runs with hardly a break for a full mile eastward, with Cwm Dyli on the right, and the still greater depths of Cwm Glas and the Pass of Llanberis on the left, until, after dipping to the grassy saddle known as Bwlch Goch, it rises again to the famous Pinnacles, and then narrows in once again, and more acutely, to the two summits, at a height of 3,000 feet. Though the whole “Red Ridge” from end to end is narrow, and a passage along it is apt to bring to mind the Gendin Edge in Peer Gynt—

Nigh on four miles long it stretches

Sharp before you like a scythe—

it is to the eastern section of it, between and adjoining the two cairns, that the main interest belongs, and hither for years past all lovers of the Welsh hills have aspired. Yet owing doubtless to the fact that every one who has written of Crib Goch has written of it in the terms of his own powers as climber, and these powers vary immensely, it is by no means easy to obtain a clear and trustworthy idea of it from the published descriptions. The old writers, for the most part, spoke of it as a place of terror, where it was foolhardy to venture, and where the least slip would be fatal; in the literature of the new school of rock-climbing, on the other hand it is treated like Striding Edge on Helvellyn, or Sharp Edge on Saddleback, as just a pleasant scramble, and it is said to be a moot point among cragsmen whether they could pass along it with their hands tied. So differently does a mountain present itself, according to the capacity and confidence of the mountaineer!

I have heard the story of an ardent pilgrim, by no means a cragsman, who had once braced himself, with some misgivings, to the crossing of Crib Goch, and was just entering on the most awkward bit of the journey, when he was met by another traveller coming from the opposite end. Pleased to think that he was about to receive, in his straitened circumstances, a word of encouragement from a fellow-climber, he was startled by the stranger breaking out into an almost passionate reprobation of the perils of mountain edges in general and in particular of Crib Goch. “I am now a married man,” he cried, “and it is not right, it is not proper, for me to be here.” My friend felt that there was a lack of reason in addressing these remonstrances to him; but his own position, astride of a knife-edge, was not favourable for argument, and he was indeed so taken aback by the inauspicious character of the meeting that he sorrowfully renounced Crib Goch and retired the way he came.