The 'Ghost of Tryfan'

by Rob Piercy

By Phil Scraton:

Moments can catch us unaware. Initially seeming simple, unspectacular, they transform to live in memory. It had been a long, warm early Autumn day climbing on Bochlwyd Buttress. Tired from exertion, joyous from achievement, discovering muscles rarely used, the group headed down to the renowned Ogwen Tea Shack. Excited chatter, punctuated by snatches of song and much laughter, echoed around the cwm. Eventually it faded, giving way to the mountain’s voice. The tumbling stream draining from Llyn Bochlwyd flowing on through its fissured moraine to Llyn Ogwen. A solitary raven en route to its cliff eyrie.

Perched on a low boulder, my back to the descending path, I coiled the final rope. I didn’t hear his slow approach. Suddenly he was there, breathing hard but regular, leaning on two sticks. Seeing my startled reaction, he apologised. He was old, unsteady on his feet. Surely he hadn’t traversed the summits? No, he had walked from the Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel over the Bwlch Tryfan col. His starting-point holds a special place in mountaineers’ collective consciousness. It was the base where Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay planned their infamous 1953 ascent of Everest. My new companion’s destination was the tea shack from where he would hitch back to the Pen-y-Gwyrd.

I found myself concentrating on his lined, weather-beaten, kindly face. ‘You must have seen some changes in these mountains, especially since the new wave of popularity in hill-walking’. He was surprised by my presumption. ‘I’m a beginner. I started walking in the mountains in my late seventies’. I apologised. His strong accent and slight hesitation revealed Welsh was his first language. ‘I began walking in the mountains when my knees couldn’t take pedalling up steep hills’. I tried to disguise my astonishment.

Looking down from the lip of Cwm Bochlwyd a thin mist had settled in the valley below. I finished coiling the ropes, draping them over my rucksack and across my shoulders. He said I should head down as he would be slow. Not wanting to patronise him I replied that I had plenty of time, that it would be enjoyable to share a yarn. From this point the descent is steep, over smooth and occasionally unstable boulders. We set off, initially in silence, concentrating on placing our feet, his wooden sticks clacking against the rocks. At that time, it was beyond imagination that light weight ‘anti-shock’, ‘carbon’ poles would become part of a multi-million Euro walking industry.

Slowly descending close to the tumbling water, he recounted cycling adventures. He had never been to ‘the Continent’ but had explored the remotest parts of England, Wales and Scotland, often cycling long distances - crude, home-made panniers carrying all necessities for the trip. His stories of time and place were wonderful. Sleeping on the white sands of Scotland’s beaches, under stars in the Pennine Hills, in draughty Welsh mountain huts. Absorbed in his vivid story-telling, I didn’t want our walk to end. Too soon we arrived at the footbridge where Llyn Idwal’s tributary tumbles towards Llyn Ogwen.

My habit is to pause on the bridge, lost in the dance of the water, while bidding a temporary adieu to the high buttresses of mountains I know and love. We parted and I remained awhile imagining that I too might live such a wonderful, full and active life. Eventually I turned my back on one of Snowdonia’s most beautiful views and walked the short distance to the now closed tea shop. The group was sitting patiently on the wall at the end of the path. ‘So sorry I’ve been so long but I came down with the old man’. ‘What man?’ they chorused, their voices in harmony. ‘No-one has come down the path, only you’. I looked beyond the car park to the road. There was no trace.

by Rob Piercy

***

Bochlwyd Buttress is 1,500 feet above sea level, due west of its parent mountain, Tryfan or Tri-faen in Welsh meaning ‘three rocks’ acknowledging three distinct points comprising its summit. Part of the Glyder range it completes the magnificent four mountain horseshoe of Y Garn, Glyder Fawr and Glyder Fach. Carved out by glacial movement, the north-facing cwms or corries are marked by vast expanses of shattered rock, majestic buttresses and deep gullies. Its predominant rock-type is rhyolite with occasional flashes of quartz. Unlike its sibling mountains, Tryfan has no softer, non-glacial mountainside. Rising from the Ogwen valley like a shattered tooth it has an imposing presence in all weathers, most majestic in snow and ice fronting a clear blue winter sky.

It stands alone, linked to Glyder Fach by Bwlch Tryfan the col from where my companion had emerged. Ascending the south-west ridge, scrambling over boulders and high scree, below to the west Llyn Bochlwyd nestles in the cwm. There has been a protracted dispute about the mountain’s height. Initially set at 3,010 feet, it was revised in the 1980s to 3,002 feet. Using global positioning, however, its lost eight feet have been reinstated. Height matters, for Tryfan is one of the 14 peaks over 3,000 feet (there is a contested claim for a fifteenth ‘peak’). As so often happens in the great outdoors their traverse within 24 hours has become a classic challenge to mountaineers and fell-runners alike.

The distance is 30 miles with an approximate ascent 13,000 feet – and what goes up must come down! The fine mountaineer and prolific writer, Frank Showell Styles, recalled his successful record attempt. Head down, he had moved at speed, with scant awareness of the stunning views or the rare Arctic plants and wild blueberries skirting the worn, stony paths. Reflecting on his remarkable achievement he felt that moving at speed, inattentive to surroundings he knew intimately, he regretted betraying his deep love of the mountains. A sense of guilt committed him to making the slowest traverse of the peaks, camping on each summit. Fourteen peaks, fourteen days, thirteen nights.

I completed the traverse twice, in 1977 and 1987. Tryfan lies at the heart of the fourteen peaks. Following its descent, so much ground already has passed beneath tired feet, incorporating undulations between summits and two returns to the valleys. For me a stark image, revisited many times on lesser walks, is to pause the rhythm of the strenuous ascent of Pen yr Ole Wen, taking in the completed summits of the Glyder range and, now in the distance, Yr Wyddfa. With six summits remaining, the just-completed Tryfan summit appears to point forward willing you on. Seemingly at touching distance is the blessed trinity of lakes, Bochlwyd, Idwal and Ogwen - where I met my aging companion - now calm in the afternoon sun. It is an overwhelming reflective emotion captured perfectly in Rob Piercy’s wonderful Welsh mountain paintings. Rob, a friend, fellow mountaineer and seer of place. 

***

Tryfan inspires memory and calm. Winter ascent, in firm snow and ice, of Glyder Fach’s Main Gully. On to Tryfan and a challenging descent down its North Ridge. The classic Cneifion Arete along Y Gribin Ridge, Bristly Ridge and down via the mountain’s Heather Terrace. Each place, each experience, unique in the moment and the companionship of others. I have rarely climbed or walked alone. Bivouacking at Llyn Bochlwyd, I shared my shelter with the international guide and wonderful mountaineer John Cunningham. In our sleeping bags we talked long after dark, not about mountains, but the decline of ship-building and the history of socialism in Glasgow, his home town, and Liverpool.

My most memorable moment was a warm, clear, mid-summer’s day with Sean and Jessica, young cousins born a month apart. We set out for the North Ridge, recommended by the fine guidebook writer WA Poucher as ‘one of the most interesting and entertaining scrambles in all Wales’. It is a demanding route from an immediate steep ascent in a wide gully to the ridge. From here the climb is unrelenting, demanding careful foot placement and a quick search for good hand-holds. Sean and Jessica scrambled up the steep rock sections with ease matched by enthusiasm. Momentarily we paused to help others in difficulty on an exposed outcrop. 

We raced on, along the occasionally exposed rocky ridge that sharply defines Tryfan in the minds of mountaineers and sight-seers alike. Passing the ‘cannon’, a remarkable rock cantilever on which many dance, the path arrives at a cliff face. Then a brief but energetic climb to the northernmost summit. Now revealed were the ‘twin peaks’ of Tryfan, two huge rectangular boulders – ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’. They provide the mountain with a crown visible from distant peaks and from the valley below, enticing those who summit Tryfan to jump the gap that separates them. Many do. Not us.

As an outlier from the Ogwen horseshoe, yet central to the 14 peaks, Tryfan gives back to its summiteers the ultimate reward. Mountain climbers are asked constantly, ‘Why?’ On that memorable day, the answer was obvious. We sat, leaning against the warm rock that might have been Adam but could well have been Eve. A spectacular view across Anglesey to Holy Island, from where we had travelled that morning, foregrounding the blue of the Irish Sea. Across to the Glyders, the Carneddau, the lowlands beyond Capel Curig – the diverse greens of the forests, the grey mounds of Bethesda’s slate quarries and distant ploughed fields cut through by rivers. So much to take in, so obvious an answer to ‘Why?’ We finished our lunch, took on more water and scrambled down towards Bwlch Tryfan. 

Singing and laughing, Jessica and Sean ran ahead. I paused at the col. It was from here that the old man had appeared as I coiled ropes. I thought of him while we swam in the Llyn. Silently I acknowledged the bivouac site where I had shared one of my last conversations with John before his untimely death. Rejuvenated, we scrambled down in fine voice. Soon, we reached the easy path to the bridge where I had parted company with my ‘ghost of Tryfan’. This time the tea shack was open.

***

Phil Scraton is Professor Emeritus at Queen’s University, Belfast. Author and editor of numerous books including Power, Conflict and Criminalisation (2007), The Incarceration of Women (2014) and Hillsborough: The Truth (2016).  Mountaineering, kayaking and, these days, hillwalking underpin the spirit of his work – freedom. p.scraton@qub.ac.uk 

Previously Welsh Artist of the Year, Rob Piercy is a well-known landscape artist. His Gallery is in Porthmadog, Gwynedd. A mountaineer and member of the Alpine Club, he has published The Snowdonia Collection (2009) and Portmeirion (2012). https://www.robpiercy.com/