That day we climbed Yr Wyddfa

As a family, we like to walk. And we like walks that push us a bit. On one family holiday a year or two ago, we started out on a walk that was scheduled to be a few miles, and ended up being a 9-miler. Were we shattered at the end of it? Yes. Did we feel good about ourselves at the end of it? Yes. Did we enjoy the walk throughout? Ummm… Mostly!! (Apart from that very hot bit by the river with very little shade lol!)

Nearly back into the trees now…

So a while back we decided it would be fun to try to climb a mountain. Yr Wyddfa (formerly known as Mount Snowdon) to be precise. And yes, I’ve been practising how to say it - not sure it will ever come easily to me, but it can be done!

Preparation

In preparation, physically we managed, ahem, just one good long walk in the months preceding our attempt. Not quite the lead-up we’d planned - but it’s so hard to find the space for very long walks!!!

We do have a dog though, which means we do walk regularly. Which is something.

And I’ve been doing my strength training - and both myself and my husband regularly practise Somatic Movement. (I’d say ‘of course’, but it’s not a given that you get your partner on board with this work, even if you do teach it!!)

We did do a lot of reading up about the climb though - there’s tons of information out there, like this or this. I found people’s real-life ‘reviews’ (anyone else think ‘reviewing’ a mountain sounds a bit odd lol?!) particularly useful for some of the nuggets of information and experience that you can’t get from the more official sites.

And we had some family friends who had climbed Yr Wyddfa recently, so we asked them a bit about their experiences, which definitely helped to reassure us that this could be doable for us.

We knew there was the easiest path (the Llanberis Path) (note - that’s ’easiest’, not ’easy’!!). But we felt we’d rather do a slightly shorter distance/height climb, which might afford us a bit more interest and some amazing views. The Llanberis path sounded like it tended to be a bit busier too, as the most accessible walk up to the summit. We went for the Pyg Track to go up, and planned the Miners’ Track to come down.

We each downloaded the Llwybrau’r Wyddfa Walks app before setting out, because you don’t need a web connection or phone signal to use it. This app shows your location on the paths as you climb, which could be very useful if you got in a bit of a muddle at any point. We chose a day that looked ok weather wise (and kept a close eye on wind speeds!), and a few days before we planned to do the climb, we pre-booked 8 hours of parking at Pen-y-Pass car park a couple of days before we planned to climb. I think you’d have to book more in advance if you were climbing in the summer holidays or something like that - we’re fortunate that we home educate our children, so can holiday in term time! Pre-booking is mandatory between April and November.

We would be climbing as a family (2 reasonably functionally fit adults aged 47 and 48; 3 children aged 16, 14 and 12; and one large, resilient dog (Ghost) who loves walking, aged 6). We agreed between us that we would try the climb, but if someone felt it wasn’t doable, then we would turn back, and that would be COMPLETELY ok. There would always be other opportunities. That said, we were all keen to get to the summit if we possibly could. The dog, to be fair, didn’t have much to say in the matter.

We packed plenty of food, including sandwiches, cereal bars and sweets. We packed plenty of water which we distributed between us. Some of it was in our reusable water flasks, but there are only so many metal containers you can carry, weight wise, so we also bought some (plastic) bottled water (which we usually try to avoid doing due to the plastic waste). You can’t fill water bottles at the summit (as water has to be taken up there by train), so we had money/cards so that we could buy more water or food as needed. We packed sandwiches in food bags rather than boxes, to save space/weight. I found it helpful to know that you have to take all your rubbish back down with you as well.

We each had a 30 or 35-litre backpack, except for one child who had a slightly smaller one. Along with our food, we were each able to pack a jumper, raincoat, waterproof trousers, sunhat, and a few other bits like I had gloves and a woolly hat as I tend to get pretty cold.

Going up

We were climbing mid-week (Wed) and mid-June (18th). We’d been keeping an eye on windspeeds in particular, in terms of the weather, as a couple of days beforehand they were higher than we would have wanted for climbing - but they’d died down on the day we climbed. This was a useful site for checking the weather in the days leading up to the climb, and you can even see what’s going on here if you want to!

We arrived at our allotted parking start time of 9.30am and got parked up. There are toilets at Pen-Y-Pass car park, as well as a drinking water tap so you can fill water bottles. There are staff in the car park who I’m sure would be helpful if you had questions. It’s clear where to start the Pyg Track path, as there is a big stone marker.

By the time we’d used the toilets, applied suncream, changed shoes etc, we started climbing at approximately 9.50am. It was pretty hot. Much more so than we expected. That meant a LOT of drink stops. We also stopped for sandwich stop number 1 quite early, like 11.30am, and then stopped for a good number more of food/drink stops after that. All of this slowed us down quite a bit!!

We’d gathered that the Pyg Track would mean ‘some places where you might have to put your hands down to climb’. Well, in fact there were a LOT of places where you had to put your hands down! It was definitely harder going than we’d thought it was going to be. We were expecting an occasional scramble but there really were quite a few places where you had to navigate yourself fairly carefully. There weren’t too many steep drops down to the sides (which I was glad of - I do hate that stomach-dropping feeling when I look down from a height!) but there were some parts of the path where you didn’t have an awful lot of room and the ground did slope away from the path fairly steeply.

Our dog is nervous of other dogs, and we have worked hard to help him with this, but we do tend to try to keep away from other dogs and give him space where we can. One of my concerns was that there would be a lot of other dogs, and/or that there would be lots of places where it would be hard to pass them. In actual fact, we only passed a handful of other climbers with dogs, and we were always able to tuck ourselves away. Just once we asked a group with a dog to wait so that we could get tucked into a suitable corner for them to go by and not stress our dog out, which of course they kindly did.

Another concern I had was around whether there would be tons of sheep on or around the path. Our dog is always on lead, so we haven’t done much in terms of training him around other animals, and he does get very over excited when he sees things like sheep (to be fair, with his curly white coat, he might think he’s one of them lol!). It almost put me off trying the climb because I was worried we’d have to work super hard to get him past them. But I had a look at other people’s pictures of using the Pyg Track and the Miners’ Track, and although there clearly were a good handful of sheep around, it looked like it would be doable. There were a couple of times where both my husband and I decided to have a good hold of Ghost as the path was tricky and if he’d leaped around it would have been challenging (he is a big dog!), but all in all it was pretty ok on the excited-about-the-sheep front. More annoying than anything else really!

Mostly there weren’t tons and tons of people on the climb, but you were frequently passing others. And I LOVED the connection and camaraderie with other climbers, however brief! People taking photos for each other, checking in with people about how far we still had to go, encouraging each other… It really was very supportive and friendly!

The views were STUNNING! We were so so lucky (well, a bit of planning and forethought - but definitely some luck too!) with the weather in terms of the views, in spite of the clouds coming over now and again (like when we got to the summit lol!), and as you can see, the sights from the Pyg Track really are amazing.

Towards the top in particular, there were a lot of gulls. The gulls are very bold. VERY bold. If you value your sandwiches, keep a good eye out!

There were a fair few people on both our way up and down, but there were stretches when we were climbing alone. However, as you near the summit, the paths start to converge - and it got a LOT busier!

At the top

As we made our way to the summit, which is also close the summit train station (yep, you can go up and/or down by train - but you have to book in advance!), things were really getting busy! For most of us, there will always be a queue to get to the summit, but it moves fairly quickly. We were only waiting for about 10-15 minutes. Some people who had come up by train didn’t make it right up to the summit though, as if they had waited any longer, they would have missed their train down - worth being aware of when you make your booking, that you might need a reasonable bit of time at the top.

Although not a very long queue, the fact that there are a good number of people waiting does mean that when you get to the actual summit you feel quite rushed - luckily there seems to be an unspoken rule that the people behind you in the queue take your picture, so there is time for that, but you certainly don’t feel like you can hang around, with all the people waiting for their turn! I would have loved to have just taken a few more moments to stop and celebrate and look around and breathe it all in, but it was not to be.

Speaking of celebrations, I did feel rather like I wanted to clap every time someone actually got to the summit! I didn’t. But I really wanted to.

Going down

After getting to the actual summit, we realised that time was whizzing by - we only had the 8 hours for the car park, and you can’t extend it on the day, and we realised we really needed to get going fairly soon if we were going to make it back before our parking time ran out! We’d parked at our time of 9.30am, actually set off at 9.50am, and were at the summit itself at 1.55pm. So it had taken us about 3 hours to get up to the top, plus we then needed to use the toilets in the summit building, and get more water and some snacks for the way down in case we wanted something. By 2.30pm we were off!

We were heading back via the Miners’ Track, which is mostly a bit flatter and more like a real path than the Pyg Path we took going up. However, the first part of the Miners’ Track coming down was quite a steep descent. The dog did well, but there were points where we had to semi-lift him down (and I think this would have been the same if we’d gone back via the Pyg Track as there were some steep bits on there too), as although he’d been able to scramble on the way up, coming down would have needed him to essentially jump quite a good way down onto challenging terrain.

The walk back was definitely easier (although longer by distance) than the way up, in terms of the path. Of course we were all more tired by this point, the excitement had worn off a bit, and the way the leg work coming downhill for extended periods is quite challenging. The views were absolutely stunning on the way down though…

We made it back to the car park at 4.55pm - so pretty much 7 hours after we’d left. As it turned out, in plenty of time for our 5.30pm car parking time limit. But it was hard to tell (even with a map so we knew where we were) just how long it was going to actually take to get all the way back, so we had had to keep moving largely on the last bit. Not to mention we were all keen to get back by the end!

Final thoughts

So there we are! We did it! Here are my final thoughts - make of them what you will!

Random stuff

I wanted to visit the gift shop - I’m not actually sure if there was one at the top as I never went into the café part, but I suspect not. But I think there is one at the train station at the bottom, which we passed on our drive, but were too tired to visit! There is an Eryri National Park online shop - but that’s not quite the same!

The train looked fun - but you can’t take dogs on it. And you have to book it in advance - so you can’t walk up, realise you’re knackered, and just decide to catch the train back down.

It was much sunnier the whole way than we thought. I don’t know why but it hadn’t occurred to us that there’d be next to no shade. We had brought suncream with us which we’d put on before we started, and did put more on when we realised just how sunny it was, but we ended up getting a bit sunburnt - especially on backs of necks, a bit on ears, and (hadn’t thought of this!!) on ankles. Definitely recommend taking suncream and hats, and covering necks. And don’t forget to suncream those ankles!

I also had a headband to keep my ears warm as I can’t stand wind in my ears, which I was really happy about (kept hair out of my face too), and a very light scarf which was BRILLIANT for covering my neck but not too hot.

You need to make sure the weather is going to be reasonably ok, and be ready for either heat or cold (it can be a number of degrees cooler at the top of the mountain than at the bottom - although that wasn’t the case for us when we climbed!). Going when it’s windy would have been much more challenging, and having good visibility was really helpful too. So the weather conditions are essential to check out before climbing, and having more than one option of days that we could climb in case any particular day didn’t look too good weather wise, was really helpful for us.

Sustenance and equipment

Having plenty of food was good, unsurprisingly, and water too. Although we didn’t eat as much as we thought we might - I think partly because we didn’t stop much, and partly because it was so hot.

Bringing sweets was absolutely brilliant - that kept some of us going just being able to have a sweet every now and then as we walked! We had some chocolate as well but it melted, so that wasn’t so helpful!

I’d have loved to have brought a flask of tea but wouldn’t have wanted to carry it. BUT!! If it had been colder, tea would have been VERY welcome! I guess I could have bought one at the top though. I had a flask of hot water, tea bags and milk in the car - so was able to make myself one. I do love my cups of tea.

Bags with a waist strap are a MILLION times better than those without. Especially because you’re walking for a long time, and because you have to pack a fairish bit (especially with children and dog coming along), our bags were a little weighty and we soon felt it. Those of us with waist straps on our bags found it a LOT easier to manage the weight - and I would 100% invest in one for everyone if we were doing a walk like this again. Well worth it.

I think it would have been quite fun and helpful to have those walking poles you see some people using (they’re also very good for exercising the upper body, amongst other things, as it happens!). But I really needed my hands free for the dog, so I think I’d have found them more trouble than use on this occasion. They’d need to be collapsible (but I think they usually are??) so that you could put them away when they weren’t needed, like when the it was more of a scramble, or when it was flatter and you just wanted a break from using them for a while.

We took some plasters and extra socks, and did use some of them when we realised ankles were catching the sun, and someone’s shoes were rubbing a bit. As regards footwear, some of us wore well-used waterproof shoes, and others just wore trainers. A bit of structure is important, and I can see that walking boots would be a good option, as advised by Eryri National Park, but for us, they weren’t necessary.

We had water and a collapsible bowl for the dog which is basically flat and very light, and we were glad of that. On the Pyg Track going up there were little trickles of water every so often which would be fine to give to a dog, and on the Miners’ Track coming down he had some water at one of the lakes. He has a retractable lead (yes, we know the issues with those!), which we usually use on long walks. But we decided that his usual shorter lead would be best for this adventure, and that proved to be a good call. He didn’t need anything else - but we stopped a lot to make sure he was well watered. Some of the rocky bits could have been a bit tough on his feet, but we just let him find his own best way through those and he was ok doing that.

Paths and parking

If you want good views, the Pyg and Miners’ Tracks are both brilliant. It’s worth knowing that on these paths, there are no toilets on the way, and only occasional places where you can nip off the path (easier for some of us than for others!). I believe there is a café with toilets partway up on the Llanberis Path though (don’t quote me on this - but feel free to confirm or deny if you know one way or the other!!).

We did lots of short stops on the way up, but kept up a reasonable pace in between stops. We didn’t stop for a big lunch break, preferring instead to eat a sandwich every so often on the way up. We didn’t stop for long at the summit area. And we definitely didn’t take long stops on the way back as we were feeling rushed because of the parking situation! In all, going up the Pyg Track and down the Miners’ Track, we took almost exactly 7 hours in total going up and down, plus a bit of time in the car park at the beginning and end of the trip to get ourselves sorted. Like making my cup of tea when we got back to the car. Important.

It was kind of good having the time pressure of having to get back, because it kept us going when we were feeling tired. But - we didn’t get to stop and admire the views in quite the way we might have liked. So on balance I feel like getting the full 12 hours of parking would have been better.

You can’t go one way (i.e. up or down) via the Pyg/Miners’ Track, and then the other way via the Llanberis Path - because they start in very different places. I say this because there was a moment at the top where I thought it would have been nice to come up Llanberis and down maybe the Miners’ Track - before realising that you wouldn’t then actually end up back at your car anyway! I guess you could do that if you planned carefully and went by bus or something, instead of by car.

If want an easier route, but aren’t drawn to the Llanberis Path, don’t choose the Pyg Track! Apart from quite a steep climb at the end, I would say the Miner’s Track is probably your friend. However, take that with a pinch of salt, since we did not go up via the Miner’s Track, only down.

Physicality

This was the biggie for me! I wouldn’t have been able to do this a few years ago, so it meant a lot to be able to do it now. And hopefully gives others hope that the ‘inevitable’ decline with age doesn’t necessarily have to be ‘inevitable’.

To climb Yr Wyddfa, I believe by any path, but certainly by the Pyg or Miners’ Tracks, you do need to have a reasonable level of functional fitness and physical ability. If you can do a few long walks, with some climbing elements beforehand, that would definitely help you to see where you’re at and what you might be able to manage. That said, you can take your time (as long as you get going early), and of course you could stop at any point and change your mind. The Llanberis Path is definitely the one to take if you’re not too keen on the idea of scrambling a bit on the way.

The way down is hard work too. So if you think, once you’re at the top that’s it, you’ve sort of done it - think again! Of course your muscles are more tired on the way down, and maybe bits of you are a bit sore and aching, and we all know that extended downhills are challenging - some of us even found the downhill harder than going up. Worth being aware of.

You need to be ready for both heat and cold - and the heat definitely slowed us down. You need to be prepared to abort if things get difficult - this was something we had agreed as a family before we started, that we’d give up getting to the summit if that’s what any one of us needed to do. We were not willing to push on at any cost!

And that brings me nicely on to… We REALLY had to work as a team - both in the planning, agreeing and carrying out of this escapade. I am EXTREMELY grateful for all the connection-building parenting we have done over the years, that meant we didn’t get bogged down in problems, we all owned what was hard for each of us, and we all supported each other at different times.

Apart from the overall levels of warmth and tiredness, we managed some small issues as we travelled. One child had a stretch of real struggle on the way up, meaning more stops, and me having to carry their bag for them for a while. Then another child struggled on the way down, as they were really flagging by then. There were a few stops to sort out shoes rubbing. The dog needed those bits of help to come down the tricky bits (coming down was definitely harder for the dog than going up).

My year or so of weekly strength training was definitely my friend - my legs were probably the strongest of all of us two-legged creatures (I can’t really speak for the dog!). I was proud that I didn’t have trouble carrying the extra bag when that was needed - although realised I had to hang it off my front from only one shoulder rather than both for the steep bits, or I couldn’t see my feet. Sometimes it’s hard to see the progress from just a weekly session, but it was noticeable to me how much my muscles could take in terms of enthusiastic use, before they tired.

Somatic Movement helped me (and my husband) before, during and after the climb. We both did some in the morning before we left, to release anything that had built up overnight. We’re pretty good at bringing in little pandiculations here and there as well, like when we get out of the car, to keep everything moving freely rather than stiffening up.

During the climb, we were able to use the principles and our learnings a lot. For example, at one point I had one knee that started to feel it a bit, so I made sure I paid attention to how I was moving, where I was holding tension, and what I could let go of to move more freely, and that made a HUGE difference.

After the climb, that evening I did some practice to make sure things weren’t tightening up, and I could go to bed with everything as released as it could be. Then the next day, when I could feel muscles tightening up like in my calves when I stood up after sitting for a bit, I was able to do one quick pandiculation and I could immediately move pretty freely again. I could feel the muscles had been well used the day before, but that’s not an issue - it would have been weird if I couldn’t feel them!! But I didn’t have pain or stiffness - just tired muscles!

Not bad for 47 and not much preparation I think! I just want to be able to keep doing stuff like this for as long as I can, and that’s why Somatic Movement feels so important to me, and so motivating to keep going with. When I started this sort of work - the parenting work that a lot of you know me through, then moving onto more healing/trauma/body work practices - I was much younger. And things have definitely changed in my soma* over that time! But in the last few years, things have begun to change for the better, not for the worse - I have less fatigue, more freedom of movement, less pain, and crucially, more ability to do the things I love to do.

So, it’s now time for me to review this beautiful mountain. Apparently that’s the done thing. I rate it 10/10, 5 stars, highly recommended, top notch, and All The Good Things. Visit if you can - whether you climb or go by train, it will be well worth it!

You might not want to climb a mountain, but moving better is brilliant. For example, some slightly less strenuous things that I find myself able to do because of Somatic Movement, include: crochet (my thumb pain that was holding me back has gone), sitting and relaxing (my upper back pain that made it impossible to sit comfortably is now just an occasional whisper, that I know how to deal with), (normal!!) walks - I used to have horrible sciatica that very rarely even hints at its existence these days… There are lots of things - there’s hope for us all! Find out more about what I teach, here.

All images shared with my family’s permission. Except for the dog ones. He’s not bovvered.

*Soma = your living body as you experience it from the inside.