I’ve been walking in the hills for a fair few years now, but must admit that today’s visit to Cadair Idris was a first for me. I’ve spoken to numerous people that have assured me what a wonderful mountain it is and have looked forward to getting there myself. I’ve even done various bits of work around the mountain’s base but, until today, never actually made it up.
Doing a little bit of homework before the day told me that it is in fact the second most popular mountain in Wales, after Snowdon. Knowing what Snowdon get get like with vast numbers of people following the same few routes, I was keen to get off the beaten track as much as possible. However, a quick look at the map made it clear that once we were up top, there weren’t going to be many alternatives on route choice as we made our way from peak to peak. So we were more determined to make our ascent away from the popular routes.
Having dropped the car at the south-western end of Tal-y-llyn Lake, we followed the northern shore before heading up towards Cwm Amarch. With the lack of a distinctive path, this was an ideal opportunity for some fine map reading practice. Having been so focused on the map, we were rather taken aback by how suddenly the cwm itself opened up before us above the waterfall. This is a big south facing bowl which, although beautiful, doesn’t seem to get many visitors.
We worked our way up the more eastern of the two ridges before us until we hit the Minfford Path to see the snow caped peak of Cadair Idris itself across Cwm Cau to our north. We followed the path up to our first peak – Craig Cwm Amarch, before dropping to the north and contouring round to Cyfrwy. About 200m short of the top of Cyfrwy, we were surprised to come across a very out of place looking chair which provided an awesome view for lunch!
It was then a matter of retracing our steps for a short while before climbing to the top of Penygadair – the main summit of Cadair Idris. We actually managed to get to the summit in pretty good weather, except for the bitterly cold wind, but the cloud soon lowered reducing visibility to about 50m. As we made our way across to Mynydd Moel (our last top for the day) I was very aware of how easy it would have been to loose track of our position. The ground was very easy going and relatively flat and we could have quickly drifted off course if we hadn’t been careful.
Having found the summit cairn, it was a case of descending the broad ridge to our south which turned out to be an awkward combination of thick heather and hidden rocks which slowed our progress, but we still managed to get back to the car before the sun completely disappeared.
So my first visit to Cadair Idris was a very pleasant one. I can certainly see why it’s so popular. Although it doesn’t reach the height of some of the larger Welsh mountains, it still has an awesome presence about it with a number of cwms and ridges giving various options away from the main tracks. Although I’m sure I’ll be back, I think I’ll try to avoid it during the popular Summer months. After all, one of the reasons for going into mountainous terrain is to get away from the crowds and enjoy a piece of God’s creation in away from the crowds.
