Leap before you look

Tryfan, the Glyders, the Horseshoe ? Snowdonia has challenges for novices and seasoned climbers alike. Stephen Goodwin enjoys the warm rock and big mountain skies

Jump, before you think too hard about the dire consequences of a mishap. That's my top tip for anyone who fancies completing an ascent of Tryfan in finest style by leaping from Adam to Eve. The column-like boulders, crowning the mountain's summit, are as naked as their namesakes before the intervention of the serpent, unadorned naked rock poised above Tryfan's mighty East Face. Each stands a good 3 metres high with a gap of maybe 1.5 metres between. But it is the plunging precipice beneath that weighs on the mind of the prospective leaper.

Ritual or stupidity dictates a jump from Adam to Eve to win the freedom of Tryfan, whatever benefits that may confer. But most of the thousands who ascend this most distinctive of Snowdonia's mountains give daredevil antics a miss. Two hundred years ago, the Reverend William Bingley felt his "blood chill with horror" as his friend – another clergyman – made the long stride. The mountain writer Showell Styles employed a more laconic pen for his 1970s description. "In calm dry weather it is not too hard a step but the penalties of failure are unpleasant in the extreme."

Styles got it right. I stepped over in calm, dry weather and it was not hard at all. But get it over quickly before the worm of doubt takes hold. No more advice is needed for anyone thinking of following this scramble over the roof of North Wales. The bare bones of the mountains are a truer guide. Great ribs of rock, lead inexorably up and over Tryfan; on to the extraordinary broad crest of the Glyders, wildly adorned with stone spikes and castellations; and the next day on to Snowdon itself by the airy crest of Crib Goch, one of the finest mountain ridges in Britain.

Welsh savants could recommend any number of quiet dells and lonely peaks where the presence of nature or the ghosts of hard-labouring quarrymen would be more keenly felt. But that was not the point. We wanted a two-day journey across the classics of Snowdonia: Tryfan, the Glyders and the Snowdon Horseshoe. Nowhere else is there quite such a combination of lofty grandeur with an exuberance of rock flakes, spillikins and commodious ledges that is the scrambler's delight. And between the two days of exertion lies an inn of esoteric charm, an odd matronly discipline and good conversation.

I am not one of those hill-goers for whom North Wales is a second home (metaphorically, of course). Nor was my artist companion, Julian Cooper. We carried with us the prejudices of inhabitants of more northern hills; the artist born and still painting in the Lake District, myself an off-comer to Cumbria. Motoring down the M6 we warned each other against too much "contrast and compare".

Travellers going westwards on the A5 from Capel Curig to Bethesda will be familiar with Tryfan's proud profile; three tops set against the skyline, deep fissures slicing down the rugged East Face. We were aiming for the mountain's North Ridge, which begins virtually by the road at the eastern end of Llyn (lake) Ogwen. Interest quickened on gaining a heathery shoulder. Broad, rocky steps where difficulty or the fear factor could be adjusted to taste led to a craggy tower, followed by a descent into a notch and then easy scrambling to Adam and Eve on the summit, 915 metres above sea level.

The ascent had taken a couple of hours, including an egocentric photo stop at the "Cannon" part way up. Well-named, a hefty barrel of rock projects from the west side of the ridge, its surface polished by thousands who have shinned or strode to its muzzle end and struck an heroic pose, the Ogwen valley seemingly miles of giddy air below. This is land of solidified volcanic ash scoured by glaciers. The Ogwen valley seen from the Cannon is a textbook product of the ice ages.

Adam and Eve antics over, our next objective was Bristly Ridge, separated from Tryfan by a skittery descent of some 300 metres to a col. The ridge is certainly bristly and also narrower, accentuating the sense of exposure. Shouts of "Where are we supposed to go now?" and "This is silly," testified to a degree of irritation and alarm among some groups. Everyone eventually emerged relieved on to the plateau of the Glyders, though recriminations may have vied with triumphant tales in the guesthouse that night.

Walking the country mile from Glyder Fach (the "lesser" at 994 metres high) to Glyder Fawr (the "greater" at 999 metres) is a promenade through the fantastic. It is as if some Welsh giant has been playing with barn-door sized slabs of rocks, balancing them at improbable angles, building castles and hurling rejects in all directions. A dozen youngsters were posing on the "Cantiliver", a slab extending from its high plinth like a stone diving board, defying gravity. Everyone was in smiling good humour in perfect mountain weather. It was only March yet sun cream and dark glasses were de rigueur.

Retracing our steps through the rock playground, we descended eastwards to a small tarn, Llyn Caseg-fraith, then picked up the Miners' Track, slanting down the moorside to the Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel. The artist had been struck by how wide open and close to the sky these Welsh hills seemed compared with his Cumbrian fells. We were at much the same height as Scafell Pike and there were far more people about, yet the feeling of being on the roof of the land was stronger. Perhaps it is the nearness of the sea.

In North Wales's industrial past, men from Bethesda crossed the Glyders on this track to mine the copper veins on Snowdon's flank. It was the least-trammelled path we encountered, two quiet miles gazing across the valley in the late-afternoon sun to the silhouette of Snowdon and the dark crags of its neighbour Lliwedd. King Arthur and his knights are said to be sleeping in a cave in Lliwedd's cliff waiting for a call to arms. Yet a similar legend has the Round Tablers laid up beneath Sewingshields Crag in Northumberland.

As we neared the road, a group of sixth-formers were climbing wearily over the stile after a day's hike in their quest for a Duke of Edinburgh's gold badge. With sisterly concern they carried between them the rucksack of one girl for whom the sun had been an ordeal. What might they have said in their polite Home Counties voices to the founding director of the DoE Award Scheme if he had still been at his favourite Snowdonia haunt, the PYG Hotel, a few yards along the road.

John Hunt – later Lord Hunt – made the hotel a kind of UK Base Camp for the successful 1953 Everest expedition and a succession of team reunions. It stands by a junction at the eastern end of that climbers' favourite, the Llanberis Pass. The last reunion was in 1998, shortly before Hunt's death at the age of 88. Surviving members will be back next year, swapping stories round the bench table in the residents' bar, 50 years after Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary reached the top of the world. Photos and signatures are everywhere. Scratched on a windowpane in the dining room is that of WP Haskett Smith, barrister, philosopher and founder of rock climbing in Britain. It is dated 1875 – nine years after his most famous first ascent, Napes Needle in the Lake District.

There is a shrine-like quality to one cabinet. In it, the rope that linked Tenzing and Hillary on the summit of Everest hangs alongside Colonel Hunt's string vest, an oxygen bottle, a pay book bearing Sherpa thumb prints and a shrunken head presented to Everester George Band in Peru. But Pen-y-Gwryd is no fusty museum. It has the lively clatter and chatter of a mountain hotel, though one in which Jane Pullee's word is law. "Dinner is at 7.30 – on the dot," was our first instruction. Jane's parents bought the hotel in 1947 and she and husband Brian have maintained its idiosyncratic character. Comfortable but not plush, it has an unstarchy dignity free of all the trappings of a chain hotel. Bedrooms have names – mine was Cnicht (a mountain). There are no room keys, no televisions and no room telephones.

"It's not for those who want luxury," says Jane. "It's for people who love mountains and a place that's rather special. People like to sit here in the bar and talk until late." I ask if such an "out-of-time" hotel can survive – Jane is confident it can – and how she would describe the Pullee philosophy. "Oh, we are fighting against the tide of baseball caps and drinking out of bottles, which of course we won't allow."

The Pullees, however, have a certain racy style and it was a pleasure next morning to get a lift in Jane's classic Mercedes sports car the steep mile up to the Pen-y-Pass to resume our journey. Pen-y-Pass is the walker's gateway to Snowdon (the mountain railway runs up from Llanberis). But it is not a pretty sight – a crammed car park by a busy road, buses disgorging large groups, a youth hostel and National Park information centre and café. Such is the lure of the highest mountain in Wales and England. While crocodiles of French schoolchildren headed for the standard walking routes up Snowdon – the Pyg Track and the continuing Miners' Track – the artist and I laid hands on the blunt ridge rising to Crib Goch. We were still by no means alone. Above, below and alongside, brightly clothed scramblers grappled with cracks and flutings, heaving over ledges and slabs like an ascending army of beetles.

Crib Goch means the Red Comb, a fair description if the comparison is with the upright serrations of a cockerel's fleshy crest. Not a few folk have quailed as they contemplated the ridge ahead. It is uncompromising – a near-knife edge plunging over 300 metres to the tiny pool of Llyn Glas below the right hand and still further to the Llyn Llydaw reservoir on the left. The cautious step down slightly to the left and use the Comb's crest as a handrail.

Like all good scrambles, Crib Goch was over too soon and we were at the concrete survey column on Garnedd Ugain (1,065 metres) pulling on windproofs. Moustaches of snow hung above Cwm Glas as a reminder of the true season. For the final rise to Snowdon's summit we joined the school parties coming up the walkers' route and passengers from the Victorian train. The rack and pinion railway was not operating to the top station, and nor was the ever-controversial summit café open – forgoing lucrative fine-weather business. Some 350,000 people visit the café and its lavatories every year. However, at the pensionable age of 66, the grey building is in a sorry state. Plans are afoot for a £4m replacement in stone and glass but Snowdon lovers are agitating for a more modest shelter.

There is no point in seeking a wilderness experience up here. Better just enjoy the company of fellow pilgrims as you throng to the summit rock, Yr Wyddfa. A column supports a panoramic outlook table to identify distant hills. With so much concrete about it is easy to forget that at its core this pile of stones is a sacred site dating back to the Bronze Age. In legend it is the cairn of all mountain cairns and the grave of the giant Rhita Gawr. We still had four miles of the Horseshoe to go, including a scramble above the shadowed cliffs of Lliwedd. Later we were able to sprawl on the shore Llyn Llydaw and gaze back up at our skyline route. We had had our fill now. Wales had been good to a couple of interlopers and had scotched unjust prejudices in the beguiling play of warm rock and big mountain skies.

The Facts

Getting there: Snowdonia is in the north-west corner of Wales, accessible via the A55 from the north and Scotland and the A5 from the Midlands and south. The train stations nearest to Snowdon are Bangor and Betws-Y-Coed.

Being there: Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel, Nant Gwynant, Gwynedd (01286 870211) is at the junction of the A4086 and A498. It charges from £26 per person per night for b&b.

Further information: Snowdonia tourist information centre (01690 710426).