When I was planning our week in Wales, I was thrilled to learn this small country has three large national parks. We made it a priority to hit them all, and I loved the variety of experiences we had in each place.

I was really excited about visiting Eryri (Snowdonia) National Park, which is Wales’ largest park at 27,000+ acres featuring 9 mountain ranges and 74 miles of coastline. We planned to stay a couple days in nearby Conwy so we could dedicate a day to hiking to the park’s iconic summit, Yr Wyddfa (Mount Snowdon).

At 3,500 feet, Yr Wyddfa is by no means the highest summit we’ve tackled. However, as I’ll share below, this was a doozy of a hike and we ended up climbing more than 2,400 of those 3,500 feet!

Important Note on Parking: Although there are a handful of parking areas for accessing the various trails to the summit, they fill quickly and many require reservations. We opted to hike from Pen y Pass so I downloaded the JustPark app to reserve our spot a couple weeks before the trip. Apparently that wasn’t far enough in advance as all of the early morning spots were already taken! We had to choose a late afternoon spot, which is not our favorite time to start a big hike. We arrived early for our reservation and as luck would have it, the attendant said some people with earlier spots had already left for the day so he let us in ahead of our reservation. My advice is to plan ahead!

The only real downside to planning ahead is that it’s impossible to know the weather forecast that far in advance. We only had a couple days available for the hike so we decided to pick a day, book a spot, and make the best of things.

This ended up being the right mindset as the weather did not remotely cooperate this day of our trip! From the moment we woke up until we were driving back to our hotel, we were in complete cloud cover and at times in the pouring rain.

The upside was the brooding weather made the rocky Welsh mountains look downright mystical. The clouds would roll in and out as we hiked, exposing big drop offs, waterfalls, and lakes that would then disappear back into the fog.

I was curious if the weather would deter other hikers and initially that seemed to be the case. We decided to make a loop of our summit journey, hiking up the PYG track and then back the Miner’s track.

While the Pyg track is one of the shortest routes up Yr Wyddfa, it is the most rugged and challenging route to the summit. Beginning at Pen y Pass, the PYG winds its way up to Bwlch y Moch, where you will catch your first glimpse of Llyn Llydaw and its iconic causeway. The PYG continues until it eventually meets the Miners’ Track up towards Llanberis Path and onwards to the summit.

https://snowdonia.gov.wales/walk/pyg-track/

We encountered almost no one our entire ascent. Only when the PYG and Miner’s tracks combined for the final push to the summit did we run into a surprising number of people also combatting the elements to reach the top.

The final section of trail runs along the Snowdon Mountain Railway, which has been taking tourists to the summit since 1896. The train was not in operation during our visit but we did walk by its termination point, Hafod Eryri – the highest visitor center in Wales.

We waited our turn to climb the small rock mound to the surveyor marker and official summit point. The wind was blowing us all over the place and had the pouring rain coming at us sideways.

Poor Brian’s glasses had fogged up when the temperature abruptly dropped for the final push such that he could hardly see to climb the final section. He wasn’t technically missing anything – we were in the middle of a cloud and overall visibility had been reduced to a few feet!

We carefully descended the slippery rocks back to the cliffside that returned to the PYG and Miner’s track split. We briefly joined up with another group who was also trying to find the split so they could take the PYG back to the trailhead.

None of us could find the stone marker (among all of the other stones!) indicating which way to go, but we managed to follow Brian’s Gaia app to what appeared to be our path down toward the lakes. As you can see in the picture of me below, it was hard to tell which stones were just stones and which ones were meant to be the trail!

Our visibility began to improve as we scrambled farther away from the summit. Soon we were climbing past hidden waterfalls and finally we were walking the relatively flat portion of the Miner’s Track along Llyn Llydaw (the large lake).

Along the way we encountered the ruins of the Britannia Copper Mine crushing mill, which was used to extract valuable ores from the nearby cliffs.

I was beat and very thankful we’d done the loop this direction – it was a much easier hike out on this trail than returning via PYG.

Of course as soon as we rounded the final bends toward the parking lot the clouds started to clear a bit and patches of blue sky broke through. As we drove back toward Conwy, we finally emerged from the storm and caught the iconic views of the national park. I was happy for the couple views and consoled by the fact that Yr Wyddfa remained completely covered in storm clouds – there was just no chance of views of or from the summit that day.

In total our hike clocked in at 7.6 miles roundtrip with 2,400 feet of elevation gain. While I would have loved to have experienced the views from the summit, I think we would have also been battling way more people on the trail had the weather been nice. Our more intimate, albeit completely soaking wet, climb through the mist made for a hike I will never forget!

To top it all off, Brian found a local brewery that made a Snowdon Craft Summit beer. We shared it back in our room in Conwy to celebrate a memorable summit hike in Snowdonia National Park.