The Everest season is now over, as are the usual regurgitated stories about traffic jams on the south-east ridge. It seems like a good time to report on what is, in my opinion, a far more heinous example of queuing on mountaintops that has emerged in recent years.

I first came across it in 2022, during our erstwhile queen’s platinum jubilee celebrations, which Edita and I celebrated by climbing all 14 Welsh peaks over 3,000 feet in height. As I made my way up to the summit platform of Snowdon / Yr Wyddfa, the peak with two names, I heard a voice ringing out:

‘I say, imagine being the sort of ghastly, selfish individual who would push their way to the front of a queue when other people have been waiting patiently.’

(In fairness, he probably didn’t say ‘ghastly’, but I use the word here to illustrate the sort of person we’re dealing with.) 

The accent was English and the manner a restrained sarcasm that we now call ‘passive-aggressive’. I’m guessing the man was a schoolteacher. It took me a few seconds to register that his remark had been aimed at me.

I was puzzled. I hadn’t exactly pushed my way anywhere; one side of the summit platform had been empty, so I simply walked up to it and asked Edita to take my photo.

It was only after the man had made the remark that I noticed a line of around 20 people on the other side who had been queuing to take their own photos. I had sort of noticed this queue but it hadn’t occurred to me that they were queuing for the summit. Snowdon is a bizarre mountain that has its own visitor centre, cafe and railway station on the top. It seemed much more likely they were queuing for ice cream (which would have been perfectly sensible, by the way). 

There was no sign indicating that you had to queue and no stewards ushering people into a line. On my many previous visits to this particular summit, people have simply crowded together. A bit of jostling was necessary; you had to be wary of selfie sticks swinging towards you, but people were always happy to make room. I’m not aware of any fights ever breaking out over a summit photo. Until now. 

This time, however, an orderly queue had formed and people had chosen to join it. These Brits are crazy.

I might turn the man’s statement back on him:

Imagine being the sort of oddball who walks all the way up a mountain, and then waits for an hour in a queue to take a photograph, when they can just take it. 

Why would you do that? I can think of a few reasons, but none of them make any sense. If you object to sharing the summit with someone else, that in itself is suspect. Summits are for everyone. If you want a photo with no one else in it, just walk to a different part of the summit. Or if you want to pretend there was no one else on the summit platform with you, there are easier ways to remove people from the background than waiting for an hour. ChatGPT and other AI tools will do it in a fraction of the time, and enhance your pectorals at the same time to make you look more ripped. 

Let’s be clear on this: queueing for half an hour or more in sweltering heat to have your selfie taken at the summit of a mountain is not normal. It ranks alongside starting a conversation with your neighbour on a crowded train, facing backwards while travelling up an escalator or wearing a sombrero in a cinema as being one of the things respectable people should never do. And while we’re on the subject of trains, the Northern Line at rush hour is a great example. People just get on with it and squeeze into the carriage. If you try to start an orderly queue then you’re just going to be late for work. 

This disease has spread to other parts of the country. When I climbed Pen y Fan in South Wales last year, another peak that I’ve climbed multiple times without encountering summit fever, there was an even longer queue of people waiting on an even broader summit.

Last month, this behaviour also hit the headlines. Two charity hikers, Jamie Richardson and Richard Theideman, had raised money for a friend with motor neurone disease (MND) by completing the Three Peaks Challenge of climbing Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon in a single 24-hour period. 

They were sunburned and exhausted as they arrived on top of their third and final peak having been on the go all day and all night. If anyone should be permitted to stroll up to the cairn and have their photos taken without waiting for an hour in sweltering heat, these two fine young gentlemen certainly deserve that honour. 

And yet, in their moment of triumph, they were booed and jostled. Someone shouted ‘you should be ashamed of yourself’. One man even tried to stop them touching the summit cairn. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that people blew raspberries. 

We hear about terrible things happening in the news. And now this.

And yet, there is hope. I can see a simple solution to this seemingly intractable problem.

Life is extremely polarised these days, but if two very different sorts of people climb Snowdon, then why not cater for both of them? 

Snowdon’s summit is big enough to accommodate two summit cairns. Those who prefer to just get on with it, take their picture then find a quiet spot to enjoy their lunch can continue to jostle their way onto the summit platform for a team shot with whoever happens to be there at the time. I fall very much into this camp. Even my Everest summit photo has someone behind me taking a selfie with their phone. My Everest summit day took 18 hours. Waiting for another hour on the summit for everyone else to clear off would have been madness. 

To me anyway, but not to everyone. People who prefer queuing for their summit photo should be provided with a separate summit cairn.

But if we’re going to go down this route then it should be done properly. These people should pay a small fee for the premium service. This fee will be subject to dynamic pricing: the longer the queue, the more you will be expected to pay. There will need to be two separate lines for men and women. Each person will have to submit to a frisking from a uniformed man or woman wide enough to block a Messi free kick on their own. They will need to remove any coins from their pockets, along with belts and shoes. Trekking poles must be confiscated. Their bags must be searched. Phones and liquids will need to go into a separate see-through container. If they are carrying alcohol then it will either be confiscated or they will have to down it there and then before stepping onto the summit. Under no circumstances should they carry tins of beer hidden inside a tube of Pringles. 

Then and only then can these file-o-philes be allowed to have their photos taken alone on the summit.

By erecting two summit cairns, the wishes of both sets of hikers can be reconciled. Dangerous handbag fights will be averted, and social media users can go back to arguing about whether people should carry a map and compass (and know how to use them).

If you also feel strongly about this important issue then do please write to Eryri National Park Authority voicing your concerns. If they can afford to build a train station and a restaurant on the summit then an additional summit platform should be straightforward.

It was his sixth attempt to claim a FKT on Everest. His previous attempts have been on the much harder north side, but he diverted to the south side this time after China closed access from the north. He used supplementary oxygen from Camp 2, and reached the summit in 9 hours 55 minutes, beating the previous record of 10 hours 56 minutes set by Lhakpa Gelu Sherpa in 2003.

(Note: for 13 years, the record was believed to be 8 hours 10 minutes, set by Pemba Dorje Sherpa in 2004, but a Nepalese court declared this record void in 2017 after concluding that Pemba Dorje couldn’t prove his claim. The record for an ascent from the south side without supplementary oxygen is even more disputed, and if you’re interested to learn more, there is a good article on Explorersweb.)

When Tyler Andrews took the decision to breathe supplementary oxygen, he would have known that it will lead to questions being raised about his achievement, but he seems to be accepting of this. Supplementary oxygen makes a climb at high altitude much safer, greatly reducing the risk of altitude sickness and frostbite. It’s likely that it also reduces the risk of any long-term effects from lack of oxygen to the brain. For many alpinists, risk is central to the achievement; if you take away that risk, they say, then you’re debasing the climb.

The debate about the use of oxygen on Everest has been around for as long as people have been climbing the mountain. Its use was debated long and hard by the British teams who first attempted Everest in the 1920s. George Mallory was originally against it until he observed the performance of fellow climber George Finch and relative novice Geoffrey Bruce when breathing supplementary oxygen in 1922.

By the time George Mallory returned to Everest in 1924, he had been converted to supplementary oxygen to such an extent that it could be the reason he chose Sandy Irvine as his climbing partner on that last fateful climb. Irvine was a climbing novice, but he was the team member who had the most aptitude with the oxygen apparatus that Mallory now considered crucial to success.

Countless column inches have been written about the relative merits of reaching the summit of Everest with or without oxygen. The debate will continue for as long as people continue to climb the mountain. There will never be consensus.

Continue it may, but is there anything more that can be usefully said on this subject? Well, perhaps.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while then you will know that I firmly believe that people should be allowed to climb mountains in any way they choose. Over the years I’ve used many methods to propel myself upwards, including aircraft, helicopters, pushbikes, chairlifts and even Snowcats. I also believe that as long as you’re honest, you don’t need to worry too much about which point of the summit you’re standing on, or even which summit.

Record claims require a bit more scrutiny though. People talk a lot about whether oxygen should or shouldn’t be used. They don’t talk so much about HOW MUCH oxygen is used, and this is absolutely crucial. As someone who used different flow rates of oxygen at different times during my time as a high-altitude mountaineer, I thought I would give you my perspective.

My very first 8,000m peak summit was Manaslu in 2011. I had reached Camp 4 at 7,400m without using oxygen. The following day I used oxygen for the very first time. With only 750m to climb to the summit and now with oxygen inside me, I wrongly believed that it would be easier than the previous day. I started out with frozen fingers after struggling with my crampons outside the tent. Only a few metres out of camp, I felt the rubber mask gagging on my face. I had to pull it away from my mouth to breath the outside air.

Climber after climber overtook me. My fingers were in pain and I was going so slowly that the summit felt light years away. Then my Sherpa, Chongba, came to the rescue. He called a halt and fiddled around with the oxygen cylinder behind my back.

When we resumed, I was flying (metaphorically, of course). I raced past all the climbers who had overtaken me. As the blood coursed through my veins, the warmth returned to my fingers. I felt like a superman. Suddenly the summit was well within my reach again. I just knew I was going to make it.

But behind me Chongba, who was climbing without oxygen, was struggling to keep up. He called another halt. This time when we resumed, the climb became a struggle once more. We did reach the summit, but it was one of the hardest things I had ever done.

I only solved the mystery of my Manaslu summit day six months later on my Everest climb. I was teamed up with Chongba again. He explained that the first time we stopped, he had turned my oxygen flow rate up to 4 litres a minute to get me going. During the second stop, he turned my flow rate back down to only 2 litres a minute. It was the only time I ever climbed on 4 litres a minute, and the only time I ever felt a superman at extreme altitude.

On Everest, I used oxygen at a rate of 2 litres a minute from about 7,200m on the slopes above the North Col. Then on my summit day, Chongba turned my flow rate down to 1 litre per minute at the top of the Third Step (about 8,700m) because he was concerned that I might run out of oxygen.

Looking back, I now believe that he made the wrong decision. One litre a minute doesn’t help much when you’re carrying a 4kg cylinder. It may lessen the risk of frostbite but it boosts your performance much less. I also know now that as long as you’re well acclimatised, suddenly running out of oxygen isn’t going to kill you. I’d had my oxygen flow rate suddenly reduced by 2 litres a minute on Manaslu and I’d struggled on.

After Chongba turned my flow rate down to a litre a minute, I slowed to a crawl. Although we reached the summit, I was the last person on the north side to get there that day and my descent became an ordeal.

When I finally staggered into Camp 3 that evening, we had been on the move for 18 hours. It was getting late, and there was no way I was going to descend any further that day. Had we done so then I would certainly have become benighted.

Yet I learned later of climbers who had gone to the summit and descended to Advanced Base Camp the same day without difficulty – almost 2,000m lower beneath the slopes of the North Col. It came as no surprise to learn that these climbers were breathing 4 litres of oxygen a minute. This turns it into a completely different experience.

I know that 4 litres a minute can turn an ordinary climber into a high-altitude superman. Two litres a minute won’t do that, but it will increase the safety margin.

Unlike me, Tyler Andrews is no ordinary climber. He was already a high-altitude superman before he put on that mask. And yet he climbed on 4 litres a minute from Camp 2, at only 6,400m.

From what altitude did Lhapka Gelu Sherpa start using oxygen and what flow rate did he use? Guinness World Records don’t say. Nor do they define the rules of the game. If Lhakpa was climbing on 2 litres a minute and he only put his mask on halfway up the Lhotse Face then these are two different records.

Perhaps these rules are already in place, but if not then I humbly request to define them. Tyler’s not going to like this, I know, but it’s nothing personal. If 4 litres a minute can turn a mediocre climber like me into a high-altitude superman, then it’s surely too much for a record attempt.

I believe that 2 litres a minute is a much better position to set the bar. It increases the safety margin without affecting performance too significantly.

My apologies to Tyler Andrews. He still has the record for a fastest known time on the south side of Everest while breathing 4 litres of oxygen from 6,400m. It’s a bit of a mouthful to say, but it’s still a great achievement.

A couple of weeks ago, we finished bagging all thirteen of the historic county tops in Wales. The historic counties are those that existed until the administrative boundaries were changed in 1974. You can see all of the Welsh ones in the map below.

Unlike those in England, all of the Welsh county tops are proper hills. Our journey provided plenty of variety, from woodland trails to coastal paths, peat bogs, escarpment edges, and some decent hill walks with wide views and airy ridges. To complete them, we took a tour of Welsh mountain ranges, from the well known like the Snowdon massif, Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains, to more obscure ones such as the Clwydian Hills, the Berwyns, Arans, Cambrians, Mynydd Du, Rhigos and Preseli Hills.

I thought you might appreciate a list with route maps, so here it is. If you click on some of the links, you can even read my hilarious trip reports.

1: Caernarfonshire

Snowdon / Yr Wyddfa (1,085m)

Caernarfonshire is the Welsh county in the extreme north-west of the mainland that includes the Lleyn Peninsula and the northern part of Snowdonia. It therefore contains the highest peaks in Wales.

Snowdon, also known as Yr Wyddfa, is of course one of Britain’s best-known mountains. Not only is it the highest peak in Caernarfonshire, but also the highest peak in Wales and higher than any mountain in England. Its rich history caused me to use it as the symbolic starting point for my journey to the highest point in the world, chronicled in my book Seven Steps from Snowdon to Everest.

Snowdon is rightly famous and unsurprisingly popular. So many people climb it now that on most weekends, controversially, if you want to have your photo taken atop its summit platform then you will find yourself joining the back of a long queue.

It’s a sprawling massif with many varied routes up, including the Watkin Path, the Snowdon Ranger Path, the gentler Llanberis Path, and the classic Snowdon Horseshoe that follows knife-edge ridges around the crest of a dramatic lake-filled combe.

The Snowdon Horseshoe
Total distance: 10.99km. Total ascent/descent: 1,023mm.
View route map and download GPX

2: Merionethshire

Aran Fawddwy (905m)

Immediately south of Caernarfonshire, Merionethshire hugs the Irish Sea coast south of the Lleyn Peninsula, but stretches far inland, across the peaks of southern Snowdonia to touch the eastern fringes of the Berwyn range.

The Aran Hills form a north-south ridge extending 14km from the shores of Bala Lake to the sleepy village of Dinas Mawddwy, nestling between hills at a confluence of the River Dovey. The central part of the ridge remains above 800m for more than 2km and reaches up to 905m on Aran Fawddwy, the highest mountain in southern Snowdonia.

Less well known than its slightly lower neighbour Cadair Idris, Aran Fawddwy and its sister peak Aran Benllyn give good views of southern Snowdonia’s varied mountain ranges. I recently returned on a day hike from the south, having slept on one of the Arans’ summits during a backpacking trip a few years ago.

Aran Fawddwy and Aran Benllyn
Total distance: 16.93km. Total ascent/descent: 1,070m.
View route map and download GPX

3: Brecknockshire

Pen y Fan (886m)

Brecknockshire spans the mountainous border region of south-east Wales that includes the Brecon Beacons (now known as Bannau Brycheiniog) and the Black Mountains.

Its highest point, Pen y Fan, is arguably Wales’s second most famous peak after Snowdon. The twin flat tops of Pen y Fan and its sister peak Corn Du rise like chimneys above the surrounding landscape, and are unmistakable. Strangely, they seem to look the same whatever direction you look from.

Pen y Fan is the high point on an undulating red sandstone escarpment, which gives way steeply on its northern flanks, and more gently to the south. It’s a mere 45 minutes to the top from the car park at Storey Arms on the west side, but it’s more fun to go up from the north and follow the escarpment edge over many tops, or follow a horseshoe from the Neuadd Reservoir to the south.

Last year I had an enjoyable walk over the quiet outlying peak of Fan Frynych before joining the crowds on the tourist trail, and this is the route described below.

Pen y Fan via Fan Frynych

Total distance: 23.05km. Total ascent/descent: 1,007m.
View route map and download GPX

4 and 5: Denbighshire and Montgomeryshire

Cadair Berwyn (832m) and Moel Sych (826m)

These two peaks are included together because they are only a stone’s throw away from each other on the same rolling ridge. If you’re going to do one then you might as well do them both.

The three historic counties of Merionethshire, Denbighshire and Montgomeryshire converge in the Berwyn Hills of north/central Wales. The borders of all three counties (Merionethshire on the west side, and Denbighshire/Montgomeryshire on the east side) follow the main ridge.

The Berwyn Hills are an isolated area of rolling, boggy moorland far to the east of the main Snowdonia peaks, composed chiefly of a single short ridge.

Edita and I climbed the peaks on one of those annoying days where a promising weather forecast fails to deliver. After driving up from the Cotswolds hoping for a great day out, we found ourselves walking through a soupy mist with views as far as the end of my nose. We will have to go back there again.

The highest point on the ridge is actually Cadair Berwyn’s south top, about 200m south of the point where the Ordnance Survey erected their trig point and marked the summit prominently on the map. Although we must have walked straight over it, I didn’t realise its significance until later. Our summit photos were therefore taken from the lower summit.

Cadair Berwyn and Moel Sych

Total distance: 22.61km. Total ascent/descent: 936m.
View route map and download GPX

6: Carmarthenshire

Fan Foel (781m)

Confusingly, the highland region of South Wales covered by the Bannau Brycheiniog (or Brecon Beacons) National Park is actually composed of three separate mountain ranges. From west to east these are the Mynydd Du (which is Welsh for ‘Black Mountains’), the Bannau Brycheiniog itself, and the Black Mountains (which is English for ‘Mynydd Du’).

The historic county of Carmarthenshire stretches from the south coast into the western part of these mountains. Its highest point lies within the Mynydd Du range, though perhaps just as confusingly, the highest point in Carmarthenshire is not the highest point in the Mynydd Du. The highest point in Carmarthenshire, Fan Foel, lies on the border of Carmarthenshire and Brecknockshire. The highest point in the Mynydd Du is a peak a few metres to the south called – you’re going to love this – Fan Brycheiniog (which you might expect to find in the Bannau Brycheiniog range, but can’t).

As young people say, whatever. Like Bannau Brycheiniog, the Mynydd Du is a sandstone escarpment which falls away suddenly after rising gradually through grassy peat bog. I first encountered these peaks on a quiet backpacking adventure many years ago. The route described below, however, is an easier day hike that follows the base of the escarpment past lakes, before rising up to the top of the escarpment to come back along it, crossing all its peaks in the process.

Beware of taking a shortcut where the route turns abruptly south, or you will miss Fan Foel, the highest point in Carmarthenshire. This means you will have to go back and do it again.

The Mynydd Du escarpment

Total distance: 22.78km. Total ascent/descent: 991m.
View route map and download GPX

7: Cardiganshire

Plynlimon (752m)

Cardiganshire spans the coastline of central Wales, but on its eastern side it rises to meet the spine of the Cambrian Mountains, which stretch for nearly 80km from north to south through central Wales.

The Cambrians lack the steep, rocky summits of Snowdonia and dramatic escarpments of the Bannau Brycheiniog, but what they lack in drama they make up for in remoteness and solitude, with long views and wild grasslands stretching to the far horizon.

Their highest peak, 752m Plynlimon, is a complex mountain of multiple rolling summits connected by broad ridges. It is the source of Britain’s longest river, the Severn, its fourth longest, the River Wye, and a third river, the Rheidol, which flows west into the Irish Sea at Aberystwyth.

I whipped the route below from Richard Gilbert’s classic walking guide 200 Challenging Walks in Britain and Ireland, so beware: it’s a biggie, crossing all of Plynlimon’s highest summits.

The five tops of Plynlimon

Total distance: 30.57km. Total ascent/descent: 970m.
View route map and download GPX

8: Monmouthshire

Chwarel y Fan (680m)

Monmouthshire is the county in the far south-east of Wales, bordering the River Wye and the English counties of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. It is the most accessible one for me, and I can reach it in around an hour from my home in the Cotswolds.

Parts of Monmouthshire touch the Black Mountains and it’s in this range that its county top can be found. But just like the Mynydd Du range on the other side of the Brecon Beacons (see Carmarthenshire), the highest point in the Black Mountains (Waun Fach) lies in neighbouring Brecknockshire, and not Monmouthshire.

The first time I climbed the highest point in Monmouthshire, Chwarel y Fan, I was unaware of its significance. I wasn’t even aware that I was climbing a mountain. I camped down beside the Grwyne Fawr Reservoir, then ascended to traverse the full length of the ridge above. Chwarel y Fan was the highest point on the ridge. I must have crossed it, but it’s not much of a summit.

It does, however, enjoy splendid views of the famous Vale of Eywas. I returned to Chwarel y Fan with Edita a couple of years ago. The route below is the one we took that day, starting from Llanthony Priory in the Vale of Eywas.

Chwarel y Fan

Total distance: 14.06km. Total ascent/descent: 588m.
View route map and download

9: Radnorshire

Great Rhos (660m)

The old county of Radnorshire lies in a sparsely populated area bordering England, known as the ‘Welsh Marches’ (‘march’ is a mediaeval term for borderland). On the eastern extremity of Radnorshire is an upland area known less appropriately as the Radnor Forest. While there are some pockets of woodland, the area is principally peat bog.

Somewhere in the middle of a giant boggy plateau is a trig pillar that marks the summit of Great Rhos, the highest point in Radnorshire. To reach it, it’s necessary to tiptoe alongside a wire fence overlooking a military firing range, keeping your eye out for unexploded ordnance.

If this doesn’t sound very appealing, it’s worth noting that there is plenty of good walking nearby. There is also one of my favourite Welsh pubs: the Harp Inn, Old Radnor, which boasts a magnificent garden with a view. We climbed Great Rhos the day after climbing nearby Hergest Ridge, the hill which inspired Mike Oldfield’s seminal prog rock classic of the same name.

Great Rhos

Total distance: 12.34km. Total ascent/descent: 506m.
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10: Glamorgan

Craig y Llyn (600m)

If Radnorshire is the most sparsely populated Welsh county, Glamorgan is comfortably the most populous. It is also the only one that supports a first-class cricket team, who won the county championship as recently as 1997. Sited on the south coast, Glamorgan contains the two big cities of Cardiff and Swansea, and the dozens of former mining communities known as the South Wales Valleys (or simply The Valleys).

The Rhigos Hills form an escarpment at the northern end of these parallel rifts. The land is criss-crossed by forestry tracks and home to many wind farms. The trig pillar marking the highest point in Glamorgan is currently tucked away in forest beside one of these tracks (‘currently’ because the forest will be cut down for timber some day).

The escarpment with the high point is known as Craig y Llyn, though this name (translated as ‘Cliff of the Lake’) must originally have referred to the cliffs beneath it. Thrill seekers may be interested to know that Craig y Llyn is also home to the Phoenix, advertised as the ‘world’s fastest seated zip line’ (though sitting down on a zip wire is definitely cheating).

Craig y Llyn

Total distance: 10.27km. Total ascent/descent: 322m.
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11: Flintshire

Moel Famau (555m)

Flintshire is the county in the far north-east of Wales, bordering the north coast, Dee Estuary and Cheshire. The Clwydian Hills cut through the county from north to south. Composed of deep sea sediments such as mudstone and siltstone, they form a rolling line of upland with views of both the industrial heartland of Cheshire and Merseyside to the east, and the high peaks of Snowdonia to the west.

The distinctive summit of Moel Famau is topped by a squat, roofless tower known as Jubilee Tower, built in 1810 to commemorate the golden jubilee of George III, but partially destroyed by a storm in 1862.

The long-distance trail of Offa’s Dyke Path crosses right over the top. The area to the south has been pleasantly landscaped with a network of forest trails, and two broad tracks lead all the way to the summit. A nice easy one, but very enjoyable.

Moel Famau

Total distance: 6.32km. Total ascent/descent: 289m.
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12: Pembrokeshire

Foel Cwmcerwyn (536m)

Pembrokeshire, the sticking out bit in the south-west corner of Wales, is better known for its dramatic coastline of towering cliffs, than for its mountains. I learned in school that the Preseli Hills close to the western tip, have the claim to fame of being the source of the bluestones that were transported to Stonehenge by druids around 5,000 years ago. We were taught that the stones were rolled 150 miles on logs, but having been brought up on Asterix books, I wondered why the druids didn’t just use magic potion.

The high point, Foel Cwmcerwyn, is a windswept grassy top rising above the mines which have now been left to become forested. On a clear day you may be able to see the Irish Sea in three directions, though when I was there we could only manage to spy the sea on the north side. A visit to this region is incomplete without a coastal walk the following day.

The route here starts from a campsite to the south where we stayed. Another good starting point is the pink pub in the village of Rosebush, that looks like it belongs more properly in Mar-a-Lago than South Wales. The pub looks much better on the inside though, especially when you view it through a glass of beer.

Foel Cwmcerwyn, Foel Feddau and Foel Eryr
Total distance: 6.32km. Total ascent/descent: 289m.
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13: Anglesey

Holyhead Mountain (220m)

The least mountainous peak on this list is of course the only one with the word ‘mountain’ in its name. But don’t let that put you off.

Many people who visit the island (and county) of Anglesey in the north-west corner of Wales, only pass through on their way to Holyhead to catch the Dublin ferry. By the time they’ve had their first few pints of Guinness, they’ve forgotten what the place looks like.

Holyhead Mountain, which rises above the town of Holyhead on the outlying Holy Island, is comfortably the smallest hill on this list. But it’s a good one, accessible via a picturesque coast path above the sea cliffs of Gogarth Bay, a legendary British rock climbing venue (I would recommend taking the footpath, however).

If you visit on a weekend then the haunted South Stack Lighthouse is well worth a visit (mountaineers like yourselves won’t mind descending the 400 steps to reach its rocky outcrop then climbing back up again). The area is known for its seabird colonies. Our tour guide on the lighthouse said that people sometimes ask him if they will see penguins. Sadly the nearest ones are in Cape Town.

Holyhead Mountain from Elin’s Tower

Total distance: 6.32km. Total ascent/descent: 289m.
View route map and download

‘It looks like…’

His sighted companion paused, searching for a comparison.

‘Er… buttocks.’

‘Then I’m surprised they didn’t call it the Devil’s Bike Rest,’ quipped the blind man.

The blind man was Chris McCausland, the comedian who has become better known as a celebrity dancer after winning a TV dancing contest.

The other man was Alexander Armstrong, presenter of the TV show Perfect Pub Walks, where middle-aged men go on a summer walk somewhere in the United Kingdom, talk about their problems, then stop for a drink in a pub garden.

Chris and Xander (as he seems to be known to his friends) were tackling a small hill in South Wales called The Skirrid which we were informed had a mysterious cleft that gave the peak a distinctive appearance. After the walk they visited a pub called the Skirrid Inn that is supposed to be the oldest pub in Wales.

It struck me as a bit mysterious that at no point during the show were we offered footage of this strange feature that was supposed to resemble a pair of buttocks. It was a bit of a bummer. Xander seems like a nice chap. Would he have the cheek to make a blind man the butt of his joke in this way?

Anyway, I realised that I had an easy way to solve the mystery. The Skirrid is just a short drive from our home in the Cotswolds, so one weekend earlier this year when Edita was back from Haiti, we set out west, determined to crack it.

The Skirrid is an isolated peak 5km north-east of the town of Abergavenny. I noted it a few years ago, when we drove past on our way to Sugar Loaf, the more famous peak that rises above the town in what someone must once have thought resembled a cone of sugar.

My first assumption had been that The Skirrid must have two rounded, moon-shaped peaks, but I could see by the contours on the map that it’s a single 1km north-south ridge. The map also indicated the ruins of a chapel on the summit, which would make it a holy mountain, but that wasn’t the hole we were looking for. My next thought was that there must be a strange rock formation on its summit somewhat resembling a pair of gluteus maximi.

My guidebook, the Pocket Mountains guide to the Brecon Beacons appeared to bear this out. It described a route that circled the east side of the peak before making a ascent from the north, the opposite direction from the standard tourist trail.

Its description of this back passage, so to speak, contained the following sentence:

There are three explanations for the formation of the notch at the north end of the hill.

Notch, crack, crevice, call it what you will: we were to find the explanation on the north side, and if it wasn’t explained by contours then it probably involved rocks.

(Incidentally, the explanations themselves seem unconvincing, namely: an argument between a giant and the devil, a lightning strike at the precise moment Christ was being crucified, and an earthquake. None seem likely, though the last is more plausible. More about this later.)

My conviction that we were looking for a curious rock formation was further reinforced after we arrived at the National Trust car park on the southern side of the peak. A display board at the bottom of the trail referred to several routes to the summit, one of which was a ‘scramble’ up from the north side.

‘So I guess it’s rock formation then,’ I said to Edita. ‘Perhaps we scramble up the cleft between the two buttocks.’

The main route weaved steeply up through forest on a muddy trail. After passing through a gate in a wall, we branched off the main trail to contour around the east side of the peak on the route that my guidebook described. It was a clear day and we had broad views to our right across rolling Monmouthshire farmland. To our left, the mountain rose steeply above us in a swathe of bracken-clad moorland. There were no strange rock formations on this side; I couldn’t help thinking that the slopes were as smooth as a baby’s bottom.

After circling round to the north side, we were confronted with a faint path up vertiginous grassy slopes. Edita raced up, but my progress was more laboured. Footmarks were slippery. Twice I slid, falling onto my face, and found myself crawling to regain my footing. I felt a bit of an arse. These manoeuvres were down to incompetence, though. This was a steep walk, not a scramble.

A few metres short of the summit, I crossed a broad path girdling the peak. I stopped to turn around and photograph the Black Mountains rising up on the north-west horizon. As I stood in position, the clouds parted, revealing twin shadows on the hillside beyond. I looked at the screen on my camera and did a double take. If I were standing on the stage performing in a pantomime, this was the moment the audience would be shouting, ‘behind you!’

I slowly turned around, but above me all I could see was sloping grass. There were no strange rock formations; no plausible explanation for the buttock-shaped shadow I had seen across the Black Mountains. I turned back, but the clouds had closed and the shadow was gone.

By the time I reached the top, Edita had been waiting there for a few minutes. There was an Ordnance Survey trig pillar, and many people were standing beside it taking selfies. A broad ridge led southwards with views for miles. Everyone had come up that way and nobody else had been stupid enough to take our route.

‘Where are these buttocks then?’ I said.

Edita had no answer. There were no buttocks, and if the devil was watching the he must have been creased with laughter.

There was a marvellous view of Sugar Loaf to the west and the rest of the Black Mountains further north, including the ridge of Chwarel y Fan, the highest point in Monmouthshire, that we had explored a couple of years earlier.

As we descended the summit ridge, we could see Abergavenny in the plains below, and the flat top of Coety Mountain hiding the South Wales Valleys beyond. We walked The Skirrid’s entire length, examining every possible cleft and rock outcrop to see if any of them resembled haunches. The answer was no.

We were back at the National Trust car park by 11.30. We had some time to kill before the Skirrid Inn opened, a few miles to the north in the village of Llanvihangel Crucorney (yeah, I know, the people who named these places had too much time on their hands). We drove slowly around the west side of the mountain looking for buttocks, but there were none.

On the plus side, the Skirrid Inn was a marvellous old stone fortress of a place. We sat on oak tables beside the fire and read about its history. The pub dated back to the 11th century. A room on the upper storey was once a courthouse. Sentences were carried out in situ, and some 180 people are reputed to have been hung from the pub’s beams. Unsurprisingly, some of the rooms are now said to be haunted.

Meanwhile, I was still haunted by Alexander Armstrong and his pair of buttocks. I learned from the National Trust website that the name Skirrid is derived from Ysgyryd, the Welsh word for ‘to shake or tremble’. The Ordnance Survey map even marks the peak as Ysgyryd Fawr.

‘It’s easy to see where this name came from, with the massive landslide on the hill’s northern tip,’ the website went on to say.

Was it? I’d just been up the bleeding northern tip, and all I could say was ‘what massive landslide?’. I’d seen no massive landslide any more than I’d seen buttocks.

The article went on to say that the landslide was formed when Jack o’ Kent, a local giant who is believed to be responsible for a number of geographical features in the Herefordshire and Monmouthshire area, had a wager with the devil.

Jack o’ Kent’s relationship with Satan can be likened to Road Runner’s with Wile E Coyote. The pair entered into a number of bargains that Jack o’ Kent wriggled out of by means of a series of tricks. He bet the devil that Sugar Loaf was higher than the nearby Malvern Hills (don’t we all have bets like this). When the devil realised he’d been had, he tried to carry some soil from Sugar Loaf over to the Malverns to make them higher. But he was clumsy and dropped the soil next to The Skirrid, leaving a mound at its northern end for posterity.

Clearly the article on the National Trust website couldn’t be trusted, but just in case there was a grain of truth in it, on our way home we decided to take a back road up The Skirrid’s western flank. From a farm gateway, we spotted a small wooded knoll on the mountain’s north-west corner jutting upwards like the bones of the lower spine. It formed a tiny notch in the otherwise descending slope about 100m below the summit.

If this was the cleft that we’d been searching for then to say I was disappointed would be something of an understatement. The notch was little more than a boil to a buttock. If Xander Armstrong’s look like this then, frankly, he needs to see a doctor.

My visit felt incomplete, so I returned to The Skirrid a few weeks later after Edita had returned to Haiti. This time I decided to skirt the mountain’s western side to view this mound at close quarters. It was a more pleasant walk than the route we’d take around the eastern flank, wending through peaceful woodlands alive with bluebells.

I emerged from woodland about 500m south of the cleft. As I approached, I could see that the mound to my left rose about 20m above the cleft and was crowned by pine trees, in contrast to the mixed woodland that I’d traversed. The cleft was like no rectum I have ever seen. It was wide enough to sail a ship through (though it would obviously need water).

To my right, I could see that The Skirrid’s summit was guarded by sheer cliffs, in contrast to the grassy slopes on the eastern side. These cliffs were easily explained by the piles of boulders jumbled beneath. There have clearly been many landslides here over the years, some quite recently. Only the one that had formed the tree-lined mound could have happened as long ago as the Lord’s crucifixion.

I took a trail leading up through the boulder fields to join The Skirrid’s north-west ridge. I looked back across the mound to Sugar Loaf and the Black Mountains beyond. It was a far more interesting route to the one we’d take two months earlier, but frankly, they make a bit too much of the mountain’s cloven appearance. The mound and the cleft are far from obvious. It had taken me two visits and much exploration to find them, and once again I’d been the only person on that route up the backside. All those people coming up the main trail wouldn’t even notice it was there. These myths and legends are a lot of old coccyx, I thought to myself.

I arrived on the summit under sunny skies. An elderly couple were eating a picnic on a bank of bracken and a group of younger people were crowded around the trig pillar. I tried to take a summit selfie without their faces in it.

It was a nice walk; I was glad to have come here twice and I’m sure I will come again. But pair of buttocks, my arse.

You can see for yourself by visiting my Skirrid Flickr album.

Haiti isn’t a very sensible place to go climbing mountains, but as luck would have it, it shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, a much safer country that happens to be home to the highest three mountains in the Caribbean: Pico Duarte (3,101m), La Pelona (3,095m) and La Rusilla (3,044m).

Until last year, the Dominican Republic had never featured on my list of holiday destinations, but this seemed an opportunity not to be missed. So last August, I crossed the Atlantic and met Edita in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic’s historic capital city, a few hours’ drive from Edita’s place of work.

With the help of a local trekking agency Guias de Alturas, we embarked on a fabulous three-day hike through jungles and pine forest to bag the three summits.

Now that’s our reason for climbing the peak, and I hope it sounds reasonable enough. But what of the dog that features prominently in nearly every frame of this video of our ascent?

If you lived a comfy life at the park entrance, why would you follow a pair of strangers for three days in searing, humid heat, up 2,000m of mountain and back down again?

I know what you’re thinking: food. It hoped we would take pity on it and give it some tasty snacks.

More fool the dog. I had to climb the mountain myself, over 2,000m on the first day, and I needed all the energy I could get. Think me heartless if you will, but I was damned if I was going to share my packed lunch. Not with Edita; not with anyone I hadn’t invited (well, maybe with Edita).

At what point was the dog going to realise that it was following a skinflint? When would it turn around and head home? As you will see, it didn’t. It followed us for every waking hour, night and day, to the highest ends of the island and back down again.

So if it wasn’t following us hoping to be fed, why did it come? Did it just enjoy the hike? Perhaps it was a peak bagger, ticking off another ascent, aiming to climb the mountain more times than any dog on earth.

We named the dog Karim, after the first Dominican to climb Everest. Here’s Karim the dog’s ascent video. If you look closely enough, you may just catch glimpses of Edita and myself in some of it too.

There is 20 minutes of footage, but if you prefer reading or looking at pictures, you can read my blog post about it or look at my Flickr album.

Ascent of Pico Duarte, Dominican Republic

Watch on YouTube

At 3,101m, Pico Duarte is not only the highest mountain in the Dominican Republic, but the highest in the whole of the Caribbean. The ascent involves a strenuous three-day trek through the jungles and pine forests of Armando Bermúdez and José del Carmen Ramírez National Parks.

We climbed the peak via the standard route from the village of La Cienaga on the eastern side. This involved a 1,700m ascent on the first day, from the national park headquarters at 1,100m, over the Descanso Alto de la Vela and down to high camp at La Comparticion (2,480m).

Our intention to climb 3,044m La Rusilla on the way was abandoned when we realised there was no trail and it would involve 400m of bushwhacking.

On the second day we climbed Pico Duarte and La Pelona (3,095m) from La Comparticion. The former is a marvellous viewpoint across miles of forest and jungle. The latter is broad and forested but well worth a visit. We were joined on both summits by a stray dog that had followed us all the way from the park headquarters. We named it Karim after the first Dominican to climb Everest.

On the third day we had an enjoyable run back the way we had come to La Cienaga.

One range between myself and Snowdon, however, was less distinct – so much so that I completely overlooked it while describing the summit panorama to Edita in her summit video.

The Arenigs are a lesser known area of mountains in south-east Snowdonia forming a roughly triangular 500km² area bounded by the A470, A5 and A494 roads between Dolgellau and Betws-y-Coed. You may be wondering, if they cover such a large area, how can I completely overlook them? Most of the peaks are not very high, in the 500m to 600m range, which meant they weren’t snow-capped that day in February.

Only three Arenig peaks surpass 700m, but one, Arenig Fawr, towers over the rest. At 854m, it’s more than 100m higher than the next biggest, 751m Moel Llyfnant. Had I been paying attention in Edita’s summit video, I would have spotted its snow-covered top rising quite clearly in front of Snowdon.

In the spirit of learning, I typed the word arenig into Google Translate to find out its Welsh meaning. My opinion of AI was further strengthened when it came back with arenaceous. You will know from last week’s post that I strongly suspect Google Translate of guessing when it doesn’t know the answer. This time I wondered if it had even gone as far as ‘doing a Shakespeare’ by inventing a word. I had to turn to a proper dictionary written by actual humans to learn that arenaceous is indeed a real word meaning sandy. Unfortunately, the summit of Arenig Fawr is grassy not sandy, so at this point I gave up trying to learn Welsh and opened a cwrw.

Arenig Fawr is the birthplace of the Arenig School of art, a short-lived early 20th century art movement that seemed to involve – and I should stress that I’m no art critic – producing exaggerated paintings of mountains in garish colours while drunk, and as quickly as possible before the sky clouds over.

On a more tragic note, like Rhinog Fawr, Arenig Fawr was the scene of a fatal air crash. In August 1943, during the Second World War, an American B-17 Flying Fortress aircraft set off on a night training exercise. It crashed into the mountain, killing all eight US airmen on board. There is now a plaque to their memory on the summit.

The mountain is only a short drive west of the point whence we’d started our climb of the Rhinogs. The bright weather was set to continue, so it felt like a good opportunity to climb it the following day.

Arenig Fawr is more usually climbed from the north-east, where the crag of Y Castell and lake of Llyn Arenig Fawr provide a picturesque foreground, like an outer rampart and moat. But to climb the outlier of Moel Llyfnant at the same time, it is easier to start from the north-west, so I chose this route instead.

It turned out to be a shorter walk than the previous day, when we’d arrived at our car tired and exhilarated after our challenging jaunt up and over the Rhinogs, To recover, we enjoyed a relaxing evening at the George III Inn, Penmaenpool. Our room overlooked the estuary where the great mountain explorer Bill Tilman spent his time between expeditions writing some of the best travel books ever written. Beyond the estuary, the northernmost Rhinog of Diffwys provided a backdrop. As rooms with a view go, it may not have quite matched the one we had in Plockton, with a view across Loch Carron, but it was up there.

We arrived at a lay-by just off the A4212 north of Arenig Fawr at 10am the following morning. We crossed a river on a minor road and took a footpath along a disused railway embankment. A short distance beyond this, a farm track slanted upwards across open grassland.

Two peaks appeared on our left. The one on the right looked distinctly higher, but on the map I could see no smaller peak rising to the north of Arenig Fawr. We turned off the farm track to take a rough path up a boggy hillside toward the left-hand peak, following the line of a dry stone wall.

A group of three young lads appeared on the hillside in front of us. They evidently weren’t regular hill walkers, as they were stopping to rest every few minutes. We trudged past them as they slumped on a bank looking exhausted (if I sound smug here, I should point out that, as usual, I was trailing in Edita’s wake and must have looked equally shagged out to them).

The mystery of the left-hand peak was explained when we topped the brow of a feature marked on the map as Craig y Hyrrdod (‘Crag of Rams’). It was no peak at all; merely a shoulder of Arenig Fawr. Once above what we thought would be our first summit, we could see our hillside narrowing to a ridge and continuing to rise as it curved towards the right-hand peak, which was the actual summit of Arenig Fawr.

We reached the top shortly before midday and took selfies standing on the summit wall. A large plaque had been erected to commemorate the fallen airmen. Another rock had been scrawled with graffiti and signed by a previous summiteer. Edita was ashamed to note that it bore a Lithuanian name and was dated only last year. She rearranged a section of wall to hide its unsightly presence from view.

The panorama was less hazy than it had been the previous day, but although the sun was bright, visibility was far from perfect. Arenig Fawr is quite an isolated peak. Nothing in close proximity approaches it in height, and those peaks that do – the Arans and Cadair Idris to the south, and the Snowdon massif to the north – appeared only as faint outlines on the horizon.

It was too early for lunch, so we continued across Arenig Fawr’s south top before descending to an enchanting area of hummocks and lakes high above the surrounding countryside. It would be a prime location for a wild camp.

We ate our first lunch at 12.30, beside a cairn looking west to the gentle whaleback of Moel Llyfnant, the Arenigs’ second highest peak. To reach its summit, we could see that we would need to descend 200m to a bare col that looked suspiciously like a bog, before ascending 250m up the side of the whale.

Suspicion became certainty a few minutes later. We descended grassy slopes, following the faint traces of a path. But it was the wrong path, and it petered out on the fringes of the bog. Rather than retracing our steps back up the hillside to locate the correct trail, I decided to start wading across. Edita, however, is wiser than I am. She imagined me sinking slowly into the mire, until only my walking pole rose above the surface, like the final scene from Lorna Doone.

As my route became increasingly squelchy, a voice cried out behind me.

‘Stop it. Come back. You’re going to drown.’

We doubled back and found a way around the fringes of the bog to regain the proper trail, which followed a bank of more solid ground. The path continued up the east flank of Moel Llyfnant but again petered out short of our destination.

We became separated as we traipsed up steep, heather-clad slopes. Somewhere beneath the summit, we met up again, each heading in opposite directions. We eventually found the summit the other side of a wire fence. We arrived at 2pm and enjoyed a memorable second lunch looking across acres of open hillside. Apart from the fence, there were few signs of human habitation for miles around. To the east, beyond the bog we had crossed, Arenig Fawr really did have twin summits now, the lower south top giving it the appearance of a grassy Elbrus.

Our descent was rapid, across soft, green, gently declining slopes on the north side of Moel Llyfnant. Before we knew it, we had joined up with a forestry track, which took us past a derelict stone building and through a short burst of pinewood to reach the farm track we had taken on the way up.

We reached our car at 3pm after a memorable couple of days in two of Snowdonia’s lesser known mountain ranges. We will return.

You can see all photos from our walk in my Rhinogs and Arenigs Flickr album. And if you’re worried about following my GPX track below, you can rest assured that I reprogrammed the route to avoid my mazy way through the bog.

Route map

Arenig Fawr and Moel Llyfnant
Total distance: 13.45km. Total ascent/descent: 838m.
View route map and download GPX

‘Fawr’ as many of you know, is the Welsh word for ‘Big’. Hill walkers will be well familiar with it; many Welsh mountains come in pairs, with a Fawr (big) and a Fach (little). The Rhinog Hills, a coastal range in southern Snowdonia, has two such peaks and four main peaks in total. This trip report covers an ascent of three of them, including the most rugged, Rhinog Fawr.

That’s almost as far as my Welsh goes. In the spirit of learning, I therefore typed the word ‘rhinog’ into Google Translate. It came back with ‘rhinoceros’. With eyebrow raised, I tried ‘Rhinog’ with a capital. This time it returned the answer ‘Horned’. Well, at least there was a connection. This can mean one of two things: (a) in the distant past, giant horned ungulates strode the Welsh mountains, terrorising sheep, or (b) Google Translate uses AI, which famously just guesses when it doesn’t know the answer.

It turns out that the answer is (b). In the Collins Rambler’s Guide to North Wales, Richard Sale explains that ‘rhinog’ means ‘doorpost’. The name refers to the position of the two most northerly peaks, Rhinog Fawr and Rhinog Fach, rising either side of the Drws Ardudwy, the most obvious pass through the range (‘drws’ itself means ‘door’). This seems more plausible. Rhinog Fawr (720m) and Rhinog Fach (712m) are not actually the highest peaks in the range; both Y Llethr (756m) and Diffwys (750m) to the south, are higher.

Talking of height, the Rhinogs are not the most lofty peaks in Britain. They don’t even make it into my guidebook The High Peaks of England & Wales, which lists all the peaks over 2,500ft (762m). What they lack in height, however, they make up for in toughness. Paths are faint, steep and rough, often disappearing into rocky shelves. The peaks feel wild and remote (even though they are not that remote); they provide a strong sense of being off the beaten path.

They had me staggering in exhaustion on my only previous visit fifteen years ago. I drove up from London for two days of backpacking on a sweltering weekend in June. I had already drunk my only two litres of water when I arrived on the summit of Rhinog Fach at 2.30pm. Expecting a nice easy ridge between Rhinog Fach and Rhinog Fawr before dropping down to my campsite for the night, I was surprised to find a deep cleft of nearly 400m.

I staggered down to the bottom, collapsed in the grass and slept for half an hour, before the sound of running water brought me to my senses. I found myself sleeping in a mossy boggy. Fortunately the water looked fresh and I was able to refill my bottles. Unfortunately, I had lost the path, and my climb back up to the summit of Rhinog Fawr over rough boulder fields was almost certainly a new line, still unrepeated. It was 8.30pm before I reached my campsite.

I returned to my car the following day over foothills on the west side of the range. The proximity to the coast meant that the Irish Sea was ever present and there were fine views west across Cardigan Bay to the Lleyn Peninsula.

I fancied a change of scene on my second visit. This time I plotted a route up Rhinog Fawr, Rhinog Fach and Y Llethr from forests on the east side of the range.

In the Cicerone guidebook Ridges of Snowdonia, Steve Ashton describes seeing these three peaks from the A470, the main north-to-south route across the spine of Wales, which passes to the east of the Rhinogs.

What an uninspiring sight it is: grass on grass, the distant humps of little hills. Hump, hump, hump.

I guess we’re all different. I had only passed along this road once before, and I remember being quite taken with the Rhinogs rising up to the west. It was one of the reasons I decided to go backpacking there. Perhaps I’m more keen on humps than he is.

Arriving there for a second time after a long drive up from the Cotswolds, I couldn’t help but agree with my earlier impression. The peaks stand in a line about 5km from the road, and rise abruptly across gently sloping grassland. This grassland deceived the pilot of a private helicopter, who flew across it in thick fog in 2017, missed the doorway and slammed into the east face of Rhinog Fawr, killing everyone on board.

All three of our peaks had their own distinct character. Y Llethr appeared as a prominent triangle, though I remembered it as a broad grassy plateau. Rhinog Fach occupied more of the skyline, from that angle it was a long ridge with no distinct summit. By contrast to its right, Rhinog Fawr rose alone, a single, standalone wall of rock rising abruptly above the grassland.

We had passed through a blanket of fog on the drive up. Although the fog had lifted, the sky was still quite hazy as we turned off the A470 and passed through a pair of gates to arrive at a forestry plantation. A small parking space on the edge of the forest was marked on the Ordnance Survey map as Graigddu-Isaf.

It felt like a gloriously sunny day as we ascended gradually through the forest on a good trail. It was, but there was to be a sting in its tail. The path left the forest and started rising on a series of moorland terraces, heading for a col on the northern side of Rhinog Fawr. Before reaching the col, the path turned south abruptly to contour up the face of the mountain

We reached a small lake, Llyn Du (Black Lake) at about 500m. The summit of Rhinog Fawr reared up in a wall of sloping grey slabs. There appeared to be no obvious route up, and it looked forbidding. My OS map indicated a route, though, and sure enough, a very faint one took us between the slabs in a series of zigzags. Although it was steep and tiring, there was no scrambling.

We arrived at the summit shortly before midday. I had promised Edita a fine view of the Irish Sea, but I was dismayed to find that although the sun was bright, the sky was so hazy that we could barely see it. Although the coast was only 8km away, the view beyond it was grey; if I didn’t know better then I could easily have mistaken the coastline for the horizon. There was no chance of seeing the Lleyn Peninsula 25km beyond that, or the Snowdon peaks to the north.

We could, however, see Rhinog Fach and Y Llethr to the south, rising as two long plateaus divided by a V-shaped gap. Between us and them was the doorway of Drws Ardudwy, which I now knew lay beneath a huge drop of nearly 400m. Having rested on the grass down there 15 years ago, I also knew that there was no direct route down: we would have to descend Rhinog Fawr’s east side on the Cambrian Way, before traversing around to the pass.

Neither of us were hungry, so we continued across the summit and started descending. We passed an older couple on their way up, who were eager to know our plans, so we stopped for a chat. The man had craggy features and a neat grey beard. Edita tried to draw him into a conversation by repeating the story of my backpacking trip to the Rhinogs, which I had described on the walk up.

‘I recognise him. He’s a famous mountaineer,’ she said after they left.

I know who you mean,’ I replied. ‘Steve Berry.’ (One of the founders of the trekking agency Himalayan Kingdoms, whom we had met at a talk a few years ago.) ‘It’s not him though.’

But it turned out that she meant Joe Brown.

‘That would be a surprise,’ I said, ‘given that he died a few years ago and would now be about 100.’

We became separated on the way down after I lost the faint trail during a conversation. I started crossing rough banks of heather to rejoin the trail further down, but Edita set off on a more direct route towards Rhinog Fach. I heard her calling as I regained the trail and waved frantically until she spotted me.

It was a lucky escape. On the south side of Rhinog Fawr the terrain is steep and craggy, and it’s not a place to get lost. Somewhere on these slopes was the wreckage of a helicopter whose occupants were not so lucky. We said nothing as we reunited.

Just above the doorway of Drws Ardudwy, we reached a stone wall with no stile across its top, only a small opening in the base just big enough for a sheep. Edita threw her pack in front of her and crawled through. For my part, I was doubtful I would be able to fit. I had visions of getting stuck halfway; Edita would end up having to call mountain rescue after trying unsuccessfully to haul me out by the trousers. I didn’t want to be that prize idiot everyone is talking about on social media, ‘… and you know what, he wasn’t even wearing any trousers. These people should carry a map and compass and know how to use them.’

I decided to climb over the wall instead.

There was a large slab on the other side that looked like a good place to stop for our first lunch. As we ate, we looked down and saw a good trail passing through the gap between Rhinogs Fawr and Fach. But our route went straight across it and up the other side. From where we were sitting, there appeared to be no obvious way up.

In Ridges of Snowdonia, Steve Ashton said that ‘whoever designed the path up Rhinog Fach from here must need his head examined’. This time I was minded to agree with him. The way was steep and direct. I could see that the trail on the map went straight up what appeared to be a stone chute. It looked so improbable that Edita didn’t believe me when I said it was the trail.

But appearances can be deceiving. When we got there, we found that the stone chute was actually just a steep, rocky track. Edita raced up it. I plodded slowly behind. I had picked up a ticklish cough and I realised that – just like on my previous visit to the Rhinogs – I hadn’t packed enough water. The air had become unseasonably hot I was becoming dehydrated. But I knew that we still had a long way to go and I would have to save some water for later.

After 200m of steep ascent, the trail took a kinder, more sensible route off to the left and back again on a gentle arc. There was a final steep haul to reach Rhinog Fach’s long summit ridge that we had seen from the road. The summit itself was at the far end. We reached it at 2pm.

It was still too hazy to see the sea. We stopped for selfies and moved on. On the other side of the summit we paused above cliffs to look across the silver waters of Llyn Hywel nestling 100m beneath us on the col between Rhinog Fach and Y Llethr. The sun glinted on the surface of the lake, creating a shimmer like ice. It was an amazing view, but we wouldn’t be able to get down that way without flying. We reversed our tracks and found a less severe route down to its shores from the east.

I remembered Y Llethr to be a much easier peak than either Rhinog Fawr or Rhinog Fach, but I had descended it in the opposite direction. I was therefore surprised by the steepness of the ascent on an eroded earth track like a speedway arena tilted on its side. It was only 150m of ascent, but I puffed and panted my way up as Edita raced ahead. I couldn’t help thinking that the Rhinogs had knocked me out for a second time. Is it possible to climb these hills without getting completely knackered?

Another hiker was waiting for me as I reached the top. He tried to strike up a conversation, but I was sparing my energy for walking. I grunted an acknowledgement and continued onwards.

In contrast to its jagged neighbours, Y Llethr’s summit is a grassy field with a stone wall across its top. We arrived beside the summit cairn at 3pm. After a couple of quick selfies, we sat on the grass a few metres to the west and had our second lunch. We squinted through the haze and tried to make out the sea. I was baffled to be so close on such a sunny day and still be quite unable to see its big blue vastness.

Edita was due to fly back to Haiti for work the following week, but she received a text message suggesting that her flight was in doubt. Our moment of rest and solitude was somewhat marred as she made phone calls to find out what was going on. I ate all my food then rested my head on my pack as I waited for her to finish.

It was 3.45 by the time we were ready to move on. We still had a long descent to return to the car. There was plenty of time, but I did worry about those damn gates across the road. There are lots of stories about such gates getting locked at dusk to discourage people with camper vans from staying overnight. Of course, there’s no better way of getting people to stay overnight than locking their cars inside so that they can’t get out. But not everybody who puts two and two together comes up with four. It’s rather like stopping drunk drivers by giving them free beer.

We followed the path for 50m down the south side of Y Llethr to a col. The fourth peak, Diffwys, lay an hour’s walk away along a curling grassy ridge, but it would have to wait for another day. We crossed the wall over a stile and left the ridge. A narrow path, more like a sheep track, doubled back and contoured down Y Llethr’s east side. It was an easy and picturesque trail; we descended rapidly until we reached another lake, Llyn y Bi, at the base of the mountain.

Then things became decidedly sticky. The forest where we’d parked the car lay hidden behind featureless foothills, and the terrain was confusing. It took us another hour to cross 2km of wearisome bog. It was relatively dry bog, but the ground was rough and it was hard going.

The path was far from obvious and demanded concentration. I was tiring and needed to focus my attention on putting one foot in front of the other. I was glad when Edita took over the lead. She set a good pace and I followed behind. For much of the crossing we had no idea where we were heading, but I could follow a line on my OS app to confirm that we were on the right route.

It was a big relief when we crested a rise and saw the forest to our left. We knew that our car was parked somewhere on its fringes. We reached the firmer ground of a farm track and followed it north for half an hour to reach the forest. From there, it was another half hour along forest trails.

By then we were moving rapidly again. We reached the car, exhilarated, at 6pm after eight hours of some of the toughest hiking in Britain.

There was a tense moment as we were driving away, when Edita got out of the car to open the second gate, and decided to play the clown by pretending it was locked. My heart was starting to sink when she magically swung it open.

We drove south for 20 minutes and enjoyed a memorable evening at the George III Inn, overlooking the Afon Mawddach estuary at Penmaenpool.

You can see all photos from our walk in my Rhinogs and Arenigs Flickr album.

Route map

Rhinogs from Graigddu-Isaf
Total distance: 20.47km. Total ascent/descent: 1,254m.
View route map and download GPX

“In the mountaineering literature of the 1970s, bruised feelings and simmering resentments were beginning to replace frostbite and hypoxia as the signature ailments of high-altitude mountaineering.” Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver, Fallen Giants

In the early 1970s, the slopes of K2 were still relatively untouched. Since the first attempt by a British team in 1902, the number of expeditions to climb it could still be counted on fingers and toes, and only two men, Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli in 1954, had reached the top.

Although Italians had first set foot on the summit, two heroic and ultimately tragic expeditions in 1939 and 1953 meant that American climbers still considered it to be their mountain. After a German-American expedition made an unsuccessful attempt in 1960, no one attempted K2 again for fifteen years.

In 1974, when the Pakistan government reopened the Karakoram for climbing after a period of closure, Americans were among the first to return. A reconnaissance team identified the Northwest Ridge as a possible route to the summit, and in 1975 a full assault was launched.

In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods by Galen Rowell

In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods, Galen Rowell’s classic account of the 1975 American expedition to K2 had been sitting on my shelf for 17 years. The book had a reputation as a tale of strife, failure and endless bickering and I never quite felt in the mood for reading it. I finally summoned up the courage in December last year.

The 1975 American K2 expedition was led by Jim Whittaker, who was invited to lead it by Jim Wickwire, the brains and driving force behind the project. Whittaker was an American mountaineering icon, a 6’5″ giant of a man who had made the first US ascent of Everest in 1963.

By most standards, the expedition can reasonably be described as a complete failure from start to finish, although kinder people might argue that discovering the Northwest Ridge to be unclimbable was an achievement of sorts. Realising that an account of the expedition on its own would be less than inspiring, Galen Rowell weaved K2’s mountaineering history into the narrative. He alternates chapters about the 1975 expedition with accounts of the expeditions of Conway (1892), Eckenstein (1902), the Duke of Abruzzi (1909), Houston (1938), Wiessner (1939), Houston again (1953) and Desio (1954). This has the effect of making the early history seem like a subplot without which the 1975 expedition could never have happened.

Much of the failure was self-inflicted. Before they even left American shores, there were arguments between team members. One member was fired because some of others suspected that they might not get along with him on the mountain. Whittaker invited his wife Dianne Roberts as expedition photographer, and then his twin brother Lou, hoping the expedition will heal a long-lasting rift between them. Lou responded by immediately questioning Dianne’s competence to be a member of the climbing team.

Jim Whittaker’s heavy-handed and secretive decision making was partly responsible for some of the issues. In Skardu, Pakistan, three team members were put on the naughty step for going off on a sightseeing trip while others spent the day packing supplies. Schisms opened, tempers flew, and Dianne became isolated, not only as the only woman on the team, but as a relatively novice climber among seasoned pros. The team divided into two groups: the ‘Big Four’ of the two Jims, Lou and Dianne, who appeared to make all the decisions without consulting the others, and the rest.

Their trek along the Baltoro Glacier to base camp was constantly delayed by porter strikes. These strikes still plague expeditions in the present day. In 1975 they were so severe that it took the team weeks longer than they’d planned to reach base camp. There was a moment of theatre when Jim Whittaker burned a handful of rupees to convince the porters that if they didn’t move then they wouldn’t be paid.

Competition between team members arose on the trek in. They vied to carry the heaviest load and move quickest between camps. This wasn’t only due to the well-known climbers’ trait of one-upmanship but because they suspected (correctly, as it turned out) that Jim Whittaker was already deciding who should be in the summit party.

As the expedition progressed, this schism between the Big Four and the rest became wider and wider. The ‘Two Freds’ (Fred Stanley and Fred Dunham) suspected from the start that they had been recruited as foot soldiers in the Whittakers’ and Jim Wickwire’s quest for glory. They became so alienated from the leadership that they refused to take any further part in the expedition.

The pantomime villain of In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods is Lou Whittaker, who comes across as a playground bully. There is a photograph of him wrestling Fred Dunham. After Lou threatened to ‘deck’ him for taking too long to get up, Dunham recorded in his diary that ‘there is only one way to handle a guy like Lou who shoves his weight and size around… he should end up with an ice axe in the back of his head or a bullet between the eyes. There is no other way for a smaller person to get vengeance or justice.’

By contrast, when faced with mutinous team members, Jim Whittaker mellowed and showed more kindness than his brother. Galen was mocked by Lou for pulling out of a load carry on the Northwest Ridge because he felt feverish. ‘If you wanted to climb K2 as much as we do, you wouldn’t stay back for every little thing,’ Lou told him. By that stage in the expedition, several team members had already been diagnosed with bronchitis. When Jim Whittaker arrived later in the day and found Galen still in his sleeping bag, he ordered him to descend immediately for rest.

There were times when the drama felt surreal. The climb was eventually abandoned at the modest altitude 6,700m, after they crested a pinnacle only to find that the rest of the Northwest Ridge was impassable. They left base camp in a hurry when one of their high-altitude porters, Akbar, became seriously ill with peritonitis. As Akbar awaited death or evacuation by helicopter at Concordia, Galen received an unusual package from one of the mail runners. He had learned of his father’s death by mail earlier in the expedition, many days after it had happened. Then, as they were leaving, he received a box containing his father’s ashes to scatter on the slopes of K2.

The arguments and recriminations continued on the trek out. Galen admitted that they were not friends by the time the expedition ended. But there was one further twist. A few months after returning to America, rumours emerged that the whole expedition had been arranged as a front for the CIA. They’d had no intention of climbing the mountain; the sole purpose of the expedition had been to plant a listening device on the Chinese border. The rumours were nonsense and they had the effect of reuniting the team in defiance.

The Last Step by Rick Ridgeway

When I reached the end of In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods, I realised that the story wasn’t complete. It wasn’t the end at all; merely, as Churchill would have said, the end of the beginning.

The Americans returned to K2 in 1978 to complete the job they had only finished beginning in 1975. Moreover, there is a companion tale of strife, failure and endless bickering, containing all the acrimony of the first volume and more.

The book in this case is The Last Step by Rick Ridgeway. As soon as I finished reading In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods, I ordered a copy, and I read it as soon as it arrived. While the first book feels incomplete, The Last Step can be read as a standalone story. It’s significantly enhanced, however, if you read Galen Rowell’s book first, which becomes an introductory volume to set the scene.

The Last Step is a much better story than In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods, not only because of the success of the expedition and its dramatic conclusion, but because Rick Ridgeway is a master storyteller who knows how to build tension and weave the different threads into a coherent tale.

Once again, the 1978 expedition was led by Jim Whittaker, but he had become a wiser leader who had learned from three years earlier. Jim Wickwire and Dianne Roberts also returned from the 1975 team. Dianne was a changed person too. She was a more experienced climber, and this time she knew that her role was that of a support climber rather than a potential summiteer. She was no longer the only woman on the team. To provide balance, Jim had invited husband and wife Terry and Cherie Bech as members of the climbing team, and Diana Jagersky as base camp manager.

The 1978 team had more Himalayan experience than their predecessors. Rick Ridgeway and Chris Chandler had both been on Everest, where Chris had reached the summit. Lou Reichardt and John Roskelley had both summited Dhaulagiri. Despite these qualifications, Jim Whittaker insisted that he would not be selecting summit teams until much later in the expedition, and he promised all team members a share of the leading. He hoped this would prevent the distrust that had occurred three years earlier.

The objective in 1978 was the Northeast Ridge. It was still unclimbed but a strong Polish team had attempted it in 1976 and narrowly failed to reach the summit. It was a known quantity that was much more feasible than the pinnacled Northwest Ridge of 1975, and the Poles had provided the Americans with a lot of useful information about its difficulties.

To begin with, things worked like clockwork, in marked contrast to 1975. The Pakistan government made all the porters sign contracts in the hope of preventing the strikes that had beset the ‘75 expedition. The team’s liaison officer Saleem gave rousing speeches every morning to imbue the porters with pride in their work. It seemed effective. There were no major porter issues and the team arrived in base camp far more quickly than they had in ‘75.

In the initial stages, there was no disharmony as the team established camps and made good progress to Camp 3. Rick’s evocative writing sets the scene. Specific, carefully worded passages help to provide a feel for expedition life. These include a tense and detailed description of crossing a crevasse, during which two team members on separate ropes fell in simultaneously and saw each other dangling upside-down over a gaping chasm. They include more mundane matters, such as slowly waking up and readying oneself inside a tent, goggles fogging up in a freezing snow storm and rendering you blind, wrapping cold fingers around a mug of hot chocolate that a teammate hands you back in camp, and forcing down freeze dried food that reminds Rick of Charlie Chaplin eating his shoe. More poetically, there is a passage where Rick and John Roskelley fix ropes along the knife-edge crest of the Northeast Ridge. As he gazes down into China from a world of snow, Rick is enchanted to see butterflies flutter over and perch on his rope.

But, as inevitably as disputes about oxygen, cracks started to emerge. Ironically, given what happened in ‘75, Jim’s more democratic leadership style led to problems of their own. An ‘A’ team emerged (Ridgeway, Roskelley, Reichardt and Wickwire), who were clearly much stronger and more determined than the others. Yet the ‘B’ team (who decided that the ‘A’ stood for ‘assholes’) still believed they should be given an equal share of the leading. Once again, team members started questioning the abilities of one of the women climbers, Cherie.

There was another potential pantomime villain in the form of John Roskelley, an old-school misogynist with no time for the weaker team members. He is described at least three times in the book as a ‘redneck’, including by Roskelley himself. But he is portrayed more sympathetically by Rick, who appreciated his strength and determination and became his climbing partner.

Instead, the book’s pantomime villain is Chris Chandler, a long-haired hippie who smoked weed and was Roskelley’s diametric opposite in terms of values and personality. Chandler was the most promising member of the ‘B’ team and became their figurehead. He was a vocal supporter of Cherie’s fitness to be on the summit team, but his relationship with her became a source of gossip and tension. With husband Terry’s blessing (who was confident their relationship was purely platonic), Cherie and Chris shared a tent for much of the expedition. Only when Chandler withdrew from the expedition, did the tensions between ‘A’ and ‘B’ teams melt away as the ‘B’ team accepted their fate as support climbers.

In any case, the mountain was the final judge. Of the ‘B’ team, only Terry Bech made it above Camp 5 as a support climber. With time running out, it took one final Herculean effort for the ‘A’ team to put themselves in position for a summit attempt.

Wickwire and Reichardt traversed across from the Northeast Ridge to the Abruzzi Spur to follow the classic route to the summit. They became the first Americans and only the third party ever to summit K2, but Wickwire was delayed on descent and was forced into an overnight bivouac that he barely survived. Meanwhile, after making an aborted attempt to finish the direct route up the Northeast Ridge, Roskelley and Ridgeway followed their partners around to the Abruzzi Spur and reached the summit the day after.

The expedition ultimately had a happy ending, but these bare details tell only part of the story. There was no shortage of tension as the ‘A’ team battled time and the weather to put themselves in position for the summit.

There was drama for the team at base camp as they trained their binoculars on the mountaintop and watched two tiny figures reach the summit. The celebrations lasted only a few minutes as they watched only one figure return. Reichardt had climbed without oxygen, and he realised that he would need to descend rapidly. Wickwire lingered on the summit to take photos, unaware that his teammates at base camp believed that he must have fallen and his climbing partner was racing for help. There was relief when his figure emerged again, but this didn’t last long. Darkness fell while he was still high on the mountain and they doubted if he could survive the night.

As eyewitness to the some of the expedition’s most dramatic moments, Ridgeway is the perfect narrator. His gift for storytelling has turned this true account of an ultimately successful expedition into one of the great mountaineering books.

The candid nature of his reporting came at a cost. Such a warts-and-all account is less likely to be written today, in an era when people are more sensitive to matters of privacy. Prior to the K2 expedition, Chris Chandler had been Rick’s climbing partner on many expeditions and one of his closest friends. Rick may have survived K2, but his friendship with Chris did not. When they met after the expedition, Chris entreated Rick not to mention his relationship with Cherie in the book; Rick refused, arguing that it was central to the story. It was certainly central to The Last Step, but whether it was central to the story of the first American ascent of K2 is more questionable.

The two men were never reconciled. Chris Chandler died on Kangchenjunga seven years later. His partner on that fateful climb was Cherie Bech.

You can also pick your level. For the extreme adventurers, there are the Seven Summits and the Explorer’s Grand Slam. To complete these challenges, you have to be willing to man-haul a sledge, brave extreme cold and extreme altitude, and endure long days of physical activity and – worse – freeze-dried food. At the opposite end of the scale are the County Tops: the highest mountains in each British county. I say ‘mountains’, but they include, most notably, the appropriately named Boring Field, which at 80m is the highest point in Huntingdonshire.

A few weekends ago, Edita and I stood in cold drizzle while I took a selfie in front of a metal fence beside a sewage farm, just because it happened to be the highest point in Nottinghamshire; last weekend we stood beside a junkyard atop the highest hill in Kent. These were examples of those ticks that wouldn’t be worth ticking if they weren’t tickable. But the weekend after our Nottinghamshire excursion there was a good-weather window and we were able to sample one of the gems, Aran Fawddwy, the highest point in Merionethshire.

Merionethshire is the historic Welsh county that embraces the southern half of Snowdonia, with its smaller massifs of the Arenigs, Arans, Rhinogs and Cadair Idris. The county is roughly triangular in shape and bounded by the Irish Sea to the west, the River Dovey (or Dyfi) to the south-east, and the Ffestiniog slate quarries to the north.

The Aran Hills form a north-south ridge extending 14km from the shores of Bala Lake to the sleepy village of Dinas Mawddwy, nestling between hills at a confluence of the River Dovey. The central part of the ridge remains above 800m for more than 2km and reaches up to 905m on Aran Fawddwy, the highest mountain in southern Snowdonia. Rolling bogland on the western side contrasts with steep cliffs to the east. The lake of Creiglyn Dyfi, at the foot of the cliffs beneath Aran Fawddwy, is the source of the River Dovey, which flows for 50km into the Irish Sea north of Aberystwyth.

Legend has it that the Arans were the site of a great battle between King Arthur and an evil giant called Rita Gawr, who sported a cloak made from the beards of all the kings he had slain. Arthur’s chin curtain was the last one the giant needed to complete his collar, and a dual was fought beneath Aran Fawddwy. The legendary king triumphed and instructed each of his knights to lay a stone on Rita Gawr’s body as they passed. The resulting cairn became Aran Benllyn, Aran Fawddwy’s sister peak.

Some versions of this legend place the battle on top of Snowdon instead of the Arans, and claim that the giant’s burial cairn was built on the summit of the peak now known as Yr Wyddfa. Which version you believe is neither here nor there, since the legend is quite clearly horseshit. To build a cairn the size of Aran Benllyn would require around two million knights. Also, if you were an evil giant then I doubt you would put up with the name ‘Rita’. It seems to me that Rita Gawr was no more real than the black knight who defended the bridge in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

More truthfully, there was a time not too long ago when the Arans were subject to severe access restrictions. Permitted footpaths were delicately negotiated between the national park authorities and local landowners. Guidebooks were filled with warnings about where you could and couldn’t go.

Indeed, one of my guidebooks from 1999, The High Peaks of England & Wales by Paul Hannon, had this to say:

This very unsatisfactory business does raise an anomaly: as most hill farmers seem to receive grants and subsidies to enable them to survive (and reasonably so, if they are looking after the countryside), then we taxpayers are paying them to keep us off the hills!

This unsatisfactory business also became irrelevant in 2000, when Tony Blair’s Labour government passed the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, also known as the ‘Right to Roam Act’. Two million acres of open countryside (mountain, moorland, heath and downs) were designated ‘access land’ and the public had immediate right to ramble across it.

My only previous visit to the Arans was a mid-week backpacking trip when I was between jobs in 2015. It was a scorcher of a summer, yet I saw only one other hiker in two days. I enjoyed a peaceful wild camp beside the lake on the summit of Glasgwm, the main peak on the southern part of the ridge. But the part of that trip that remains most vividly in my mind was when I narrowly avoided splitting my trousers as I leapt a barbed-wire fence while trying to flee from a heard of angry cows.

Eleven years later, I hoped that a return visit to the hills would help me to recover from the trauma of that day, as well as enabling Edita to tick another box. Aran Fawddwy can be climbed on the south side from the secluded valley of Cwm Cywarch. Access is gained up a narrow farm road hemmed in by hedges. I drove for 3km and was grateful not to meet any traffic coming the other way, which would meant having to reverse 3km all the way back again. Despite the uninviting approach, there is a substantial car park beside a farm at the top end of the valley.

We had wondered about snow conditions. It had been freezing and wet overnight, so I expected fresh snow cover. The Snowdon ground-conditions internet feed had reported fresh snow from 400m. I hurriedly packed ice axe and crampons before we left the Cotswolds at 6am that morning.

The 685m satellite peak of Pen Main rose above us, hiding Aran Fawddwy’s summit from view. Its top was drizzled in snow like a giant birthday cake. To its right, the Drysgol ridge that we would be following to the summit was a white wall. I wore my big boots, packed my crampons and strapped my ice axe to my pack. But Edita couldn’t bear stomping up in big boots. She packed microspikes in case of icy conditions and also took her axe.

As things transpired, neither axe nor crampons were needed, but the deep snow and boggy conditions higher up meant that I was glad of my big boots. I chose to take a circular route up to the summit, starting out in an anticlockwise direction by taking a path that slanted above the south side of the valley of Cwm Hengwm. The path was very steep lower down, but became more gradual. At the head of the combe, a little over a kilometre away, we could see that our path swung round to the left to reach the ridge of Drysgol on the opposite side. This was the white rampart that we could see from the car park. Our route up to the summit of Aran Fawddwy followed the crest of this ridge, which looked fairly horizontal.

We started in shade at 9.30am, but the sky was clear and the forecast was for sunshine. Edita wore magic glasses that tinted as the sky brightened. Up ahead of us, we could see that we left the shady south side of the valley at more or less exactly the snow line. It would be bright, and we discussed whether I should have brought my sunglasses.

‘I guess if I get snow blind then you’ll have to drive home,’ I said.

I reassured Edita that I had never heard of anyone getting snow blindness in winter conditions in the UK. The altitude is low, the air is thicker, the sun never gets very high in the sky, and there is still plenty of green around.

‘If anyone got snow blind, then I’m sure it would be all over social media,’ I said. ‘It would be like “these idiots shouldn’t be allowed on the hills. They should carry a map and compass and know how to use them!”’

We reached the snow line at 450m, shortly before arriving on the 571m ‘bwlch’ beneath Waun Goch – this is the Welsh word for ‘col’, and is mostly easily pronounced by trying to bring up phlegm from the back of your throat. 

The col was more of a boggy plateau than a true col, and was carpeted with a couple of inches of fresh snow. The view to the east over rolling hills was magical. None of those hills were especially high, but today they were basked in snow and looked remote and mountainous.

From Waun Goch the ascent became more of a slog. We followed the tracks of a lone hiker with size 11 feet, who can have made those prints no more than an hour earlier. The snow was a few inches deep, which made for harder work. I dropped a little behind Edita as we walked beside a fence up to the ridge of Drysgol. 

Just below the crest we crossed a ladder stile over another fence and had our first view of Aran Fawddwy. The highest point in Merionethshire peeped above the ridge across another combe. With runnels of snow trickling in cracks down its east face, it looked like a slice of Christmas pudding lying on its side.

It didn’t look so far away, but I was out of breath from the slog and asked Edita if we could stop for a sandwich. We walked for a short distance along Drysgol’s broad, snowy crest. To our left we could look across Cwm Hengwm, whose opposite side we had slanted up a short while earlier. On the right I spied the black pool of Creiglyn Dyli nestling in the combe beneath Aran Fawddwy’s east face. Eleven years ago I staggered more than 200m down Drysgol’s northern side carrying a large pack, and collapsed on the shores of this lake, which is the source of the River Dovey.

Today we stopped on the crest and looked west as we sat down for an early lunch. It was 11am. Ahead of us the ridge rose a little more steeply to a small summit marked on the map as Drws Bach. There appeared to be a figure standing motionless on its top, but after it continued to be motionless while I ate a whole sandwich, I realised that it must be a cairn.

Beneath Drws Bach, the snow had drifted into a thick layer and our walk had a true winter feel. The sizeable cairn was erected in 1960 in memory of a mountain rescue volunteer who had been struck by lightning in the Arans (there are more painful places to be struck by lightning). The plaque was encrusted in ice and unreadable, but I had taken a photo of it on my previous visit.

On a normal day, the section from Drws Bach to the summit would doubtless be a piece of cake, with a clear trail marking the remaining ascent of 150m to the top. But the trail was now hidden beneath snow that was several inches deep. We made the mistake of following the lone hiker’s footprints, which followed a zigzagging fence up difficult terrain. When I left his steps to take a more direct route over rocks, the going became much easier. Edita had been a long way in front of me at the time, and when I popped over a brow ahead of her, she accused me of cheating.

We hadn’t met a single human since leaving the car, but when we reached the summit at 12.30, we found that it was crawling with people, as though they had been magically dropped there.

It had been a tiring final haul to the top. After taking some summit selfies, we sat against a rock on the east side, away from the other people, to eat our lunch. Our view was across the hills beyond Creiglyn Dyli, but the lake was too close beneath the cliffs on which we perched for us to see it. What should have been a peaceful moment enjoying the beauty of the mountains was marred by one of those noisy groups who can’t stop talking.

We intended to continue along the ridge to Aran Benllyn, the Arans’ second summit, but it still looked a long way off. My OS app suggested that it would take 45 minutes to get there and another 45 to come back. But if conditions were like those we had just endured then it would be another slog.

‘We’ve made it to the county top now,’ I said to Edita. ‘We don’t have to go there. We can go down to the pub and watch the rugby.’

But by the time we’d finished eating, we had agreed that to skip the other summit would be a bit lame. In fact, it turned out to be the most enjoyable part of the day. Although we didn’t meet anyone, the path had been well trodden, so the going was a little less strenuous than we had expected.

After dropping down off a rocky summit, we lost sight of Aran Benllyn for much of the traverse from Aran Fawddwy. We crested a long rising brow, following the line of a fence. Once over the brow, Aran Benllyn reappeared in the form of a rocky promontory. We descended to a col and climbed to its summit, reaching the 885m top at 1.30.

It was much quieter up there than it had been on Aran Fawddwy. This gave us more opportunity to appreciate the remoteness and the view. We could see all of Snowdonia’s main massifs: Cadair Idris to the south, the Rhinogs shielding the Irish Sea to the west, the smaller plateau of the Arenigs to the north, and the rolling ridge of the Berwyns to the east. Beyond the Arenigs, the more substantial snowcap of the Snowdon massif rose into cloud.

We traced our steps back to the rocky pile of Aran Fawddwy and skirted its summit. The next part of the walk was a tedious descent, crossing a bog for over 3km as we followed another fence. The first part of the descent involved trudging steeply down drifts of snow that turned the bottom of our trouser legs into white ski boots.

Ladder stiles crossed the fence at regular intervals, causing me to wonder whether we were on the correct side of the fence. Eventually we decided to cross over to the left side, where the trail seemed more obvious. Slippery planks had been laid across the deeper sections of bog. In other parts the track had been paved with gravel, which might have been appreciated on another day. Today these sections were covered with treacherous icy sheets. Edita had chosen to wear approach shoes instead of big boots. Her feet had become soaking wet from the deep snow in the morning and the squelching bog in the afternoon.

For the entire 3km we could see the gully beneath Glasgwm that led down into Cwm Cywarch. This was our exit point from the mountain. It never seemed very far away, but every time I looked on my OS app, thinking we must be nearly there, I could see that we had only come a fraction of the way.

‘Oh, we’ve still got miles to go,’ I said each time, which started to annoy Edita.

Once I realised that we had to cross the bog all the way to the base of Glasgwm before turning down the gully, I stopped looking at my app and became more relaxed. 

It was a relief to exit the bog. After turning down the gully, the trail became much firmer underfoot and we descended rapidly. The gully had looked narrow and precipitous from down below, wedged between two steep cliffs; but the trail was clear and nowhere difficult.

We emerged onto the farm track through Cwm Cywarch beside a pair of cylindrical glamping pods. From here it was a short walk back to our car.

We arrived back at 4pm. This was perfect. The Six Nations match between England and Scotland kicked off at 4.40. We were able to drive to the Brigands Inn and check into our room in time for the national anthems. Those of you who watched the match will know that the result was far from perfect for England fans, but it was an entertaining game, and we enjoyed an excellent dinner in the pub afterwards.

All in all, it was a great mini holiday, and another county top had been ticked.

You can see all photos from our walk in my 2026 Flickr album.

Route map

Aran Fawddwy and Aran Benllyn
Total distance: 16.93km. Total ascent/descent: 1,070m.
View route map and download GPX

No, not that. I mean I’ve finally finished narrating all of my diaries and released them as audiobooks. I completed the very last one, The Baruntse Adventure, last month. I no longer need to spend hours on end locked in the padded room at the back of the house talking into a microphone (although my wife thinks I should spend more time there). It means that you can now enjoy all of my books at the same time as chasing a seven-pound Double Gloucester cheese down a hillside (or any other physical activity for that matter).

I’ve also been able to confirm that my latest audiobook is the only audiobook available anywhere in the world entirely about climbing Baruntse, the 7,129m peak just south of Mount Everest. This means that if you’re interested in climbing Baruntse, it’s a must listen. It’s also a pretty good listen if you’re not remotely interested in climbing Baruntse, but just like listening to an entertaining adventure while you do the ironing.

Back in 2010, I embarked on a five-week trek across the Makalu region of Nepal with my friend and erstwhile climbing partner, the very same Mark Dickson for whom the Dickson Step takes its name.

Mark managed to injure himself in bizarre fashion before we’d even started the adventure. As we returned to our hotel in Kathmandu after an evening in Sam’s Bar, our rickshaw driver pedalled too fast over a speed bump and lurched to a halt, causing Mark to fly out of the front of the rickshaw. Luckily Mark’s injury wasn’t too serious, but things could have been much worse for me when I nearly died laughing.

From that moment, things just got better. Our trek followed in the footsteps of the great New Zealand mountaineer, Sir Edmund Hillary. From the Arun Valley in the far east of Nepal, we crossed Shipton’s Pass and trekked up the picturesque Barun Valley past Makalu, crossed Sherpani Col and continued across the glaciated Barun Plateau to Baruntse. We completed our journey by trekking down the Hongu and Hinku Valleys over two more high passes, the Mera La and Zatr La, to finish in Lukla.

Hillary had an obsession with Makalu that was to lead to his downfall. He was famous for being the first man to reach the highest point on the planet, but in later life he was such a poor acclimatiser that his body struggled at the comparatively low altitude of 3,000m. A serious case of altitude sickness on Makalu was the cause of his troubles.

Hillary’s team from the New Zealand Alpine Club did make the first ascent of Baruntse, however. It was an ascent not without problems; and as we arrived in Baruntse Base Camp more than 50 years later, we were to learn of an incident with chilling parallels.

The Baruntse Adventure contains my usual blend of humour, mountaineering history and tales of expedition life. It may be the last audiobook I ever narrate, so for that reason alone you can’t miss it.

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