Traffic Jam on Snowdon

Posted: December 24, 2007 
Filed under: Landscape
Tagged: crib goch, snowdon, wales
Comments: 1 Comment

Description

Here’s a photo everyone should recognise. At least I hope lots of people recognise it given the crowds that were on top of this the day I took the picture.

Snowdon is the highest mountain in Wales, it’s also one of the easiest to summit; the Victorians helpfully built a railway to the top and the National Trust maintain a very wide, very flat path up the side. This path is known as the Tourist Path and is an insanely boring trudge from its beginning at Llanberis. It’s much better to go up Snowdon from the car park at Pen-y-pas via the Miner’s or Pyg track as they’re steeper and much more interesting.

There’s also a third way over the ridge called Crib Goch. That’s the route me and my dad chose along with about forty other randoms. It’s a nice scramble and totter over broken rock, exposed ledges and some parts that wouldn’t look out of place in the Lord of the Rings. It’s not a good place to fall off though, as someone found out on that day. We’d just reached the summit cairn and noticed a yellow mountain rescue helecopter flying around the beginning of Crib Goch. If you’ve been into the mountains for a while these things become less interesting and most of the time are out for a practise. Not this time though, upon reaching the bottom again we learned that someone had fallen off the beginning of the ridge and needed the helecopter to collect him.

From our vantage point on the ridge Snowdon looked like an ant-hill, there were hundreds of small black shapes swarming all over it. I could easily see two hundred other people out for a walk. This photo was taken from about half way along Crib Goch looking towards the summit. If I recall this correctly I was precariously balanced on one leg, the other hooked behind a bit of rock to keep my balance in the strong gusts that tried their best to blow me into the lake at the bottom. It’s not the situation to get out a tripod, think about composition for too long and ponder camera settings. I simply turned my camera on, told it I wanted the “landscape” preset and lined up what I hoped was something interesting in the sun-dazzled LCD and pressed the shutter several times. As with most pictures done in this way I ended up with about six photos that were “almost” good, one totally fuzzy mess and this which I had printed and is now on the wall at the bottom of my stairs.

Next Photo »