Snowden, but no snow

Mt Snowden was one of my main reasons for wanting to visit Wales.

Well, it is summer so I did not really expect any snow. Mt Snowden, Wales' highest mountain, is 1085m tall, which doesn't sound all that big when you think that Cradle Mountain 1545m tall. But, the difference, when it comes to getting to the top, is your starting point. At Cradle, you start from Dove Lake already at 970m so there is 585m of climbing to the top. At Mt Snowden the walk starts at 110m above sea level, and ascend 975m over 7km. It is quite a big hill to walk up.

But, there is a train!

All the way to the top.

The track gets very steep.

It uses the same rack and pinion system as the West Coast Wilderness Railway back home in Tasmania.

The trains run with both diesel and steam engines, and passed us regularly as we walked to the top of Snowden. This is the view at the very top. Just below the summit there a decent sized cafe at the train station where we sat inside to eat our lunch with a lot of others who had the same idea, including two groups of school children and all the train passengers. It was crowded, but thankfully, warm and dry. Outside was damp and very cold.

Fortunately, we saw many magnificent scenes almost all the way up and down.

That is the village of Llanberris on the lake at the bottom of Mt Snowden, with a massive (I think, unused) slate quarry on the hillside above it.

A wonderful day of walking and a tick off the bucket list.