After my solo day in the Carneddau last week, it didn’t take much to persuade me to head back into the mountains. This time I had the company of Adam, who is looking to get in additional mountain days for his log book and his Mountain Leader assessment which he is hoping to complete in January. One of the things he is looking to develop is his experience on ridges, so we planned our day to take in a number of ridge scrambles.

After parking at the base of Tryfan on the A5 next to Llyn Ogwen, we started our ascent of Tryfan’s north ridge. It’s a great route due to it’s easy access being so close to the A5, the width of the ridge giving so many variations and options of lines to be taken and amazing views along the Ogwen Valley and down Nant Ffrancon. This, combined with the fact that Tryfan is the most ‘mountainous’ looking 3000ft peak in Wales, makes it the most popular scramble in the Glyders.

Our day started dry, but it wasn’t long before gentle rain and strong winds made the rock quite slippery and slowed our progress. With the cloud base at around 600m, there wasn’t much of a view either, but it didn’t detract from some great scrambling.

After a quick bite to eat, we descended the south ridge before continuing south onto the top of the Glyders via Bristly Ridge. Again, our progress was slowed by the wet rock and we found ourselves doubling back a few times to find an alternative route as some normal sections didn’t look too inviting in the wet! Having completed the ridge, we took a bearing through the cloud and rocky wasteland which makes up the top of the Glyders to find the peak of Glyder Fach for lunch.

Our plan had been to descent the ridge of Y Gribin but, with time running on, we opted to return to the top of Bristly Ridge and take the rocky ‘path’ down the eastern side of the ridge before turning north west and descending past Llyn Bochlwyd.