It is hard to imagine Mt. Snowdon today "without its people"; it is climbed by approximately half a million each year, on foot, in wheelchairs, on crutches, roller skates, on horseback, bicycle, piggy-back, and by men and women on stilts. Perhaps the words of the little rhyme should be changed to include Snowdon's mountain with its people, for on no time of the day or season of the year are they absent from its slopes. Heavy erosion from the sheer mass of people is fast taking its toll of the footpaths and ridges of this, the most magnificent yet most abused of our seven wonders.

Snowdon gets its English name from the Saxon Snow Dun, the snow hill or fortress; it is but one mountain inside the largest of the three national parks of Wales (845 sq. miles). Within the Snowdonia National Park (Parc Genedlaethol Eryri) are several mountain ranges with 15 peaks over 3,000 feet. Though tiny by world standards, the precipitous heights found in many areas of the park helped train the team that first conquered Mount Everest (a mountain that gets its English name from a Welshman, George Everest) in 1953 The highest point is Yr Wyddfa (3,560 ft), named after Rhita Gawr, a giant killed by King Arthur said to be buried in a cairn (Gwyddfa Rhita) on top of the mountain. Into one of its lakes, Llyn Llydaw, the mighty Excalibur,(Caledfwlch) was thrown by Arthur, mortally wounded nearby. Other heights on the same mountain massif are Crib-y-Ddysgyl, Crib Goch, Lliwedd and Yr Aran.

In 1896, the Snowdon Mountain Railway was completed from its starting point at Llanberis. Some of the little steam engines date from that year. The railway replaced the local guides with their sturdy mountain ponies which for decades had been taking Victorian tourists to the summit to watch the sunrise. The engines run for about five miles on a narrow gauge rack-and-pinion line, the only one in the British Isles. The journey covering a maximum gradient of 1 in 5.5, is completed in about two and a half hours, with half an hour allowed for refreshments at the little wind-swept cafe just below the cairn on the summit. When the weather allows, as Snowdon is notorious for its sudden mists and complete lack of visibility, the views are as spectacular as any in the whole British Isles.


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