Drive north out of Porthmadog on a clear afternoon and one mountain stands apart from the rest.
It rises to a point, with a steep face on either side, and looks like it needs a rope. That is Cnicht, nicknamed the Welsh Matterhorn.
Cnicht is a ridge seen end-on, and the walk up it is a moderate half day from a village car park.
The pointed shape is a trick of the angle. Turn ninety degrees and the pyramid becomes a long, gentle whaleback with the summit at its far end.
There are two short scrambles near the top. In between is one of the least crowded good hills in Eryri.
The route from Croesor
Walking Britain’s “Cnicht from Croesor” is the walk that climbs the mountain. It is graded Moderate.
- Distance: 6.3 miles
- Ascent: 515 m
- Time: 4 hours 30
- Summit: 689 m
The start is “a small car park in Croesor”, grid reference SH 631446. The route leaves the village “up past the school and chapel”.
The summit is lower than Moel Siabod and a good deal lower than Tryfan.
A 515-metre ascent spread over three miles of ridge is a steady climb, “climbing gently at first”.
The Park Authority’s Croesor Circular stays below the mountain and never reaches the top.
Why it looks like a Matterhorn and is not one
The valley below was scoured by a glacier in the last Ice Age, between 26,000 and 11,000 years ago. The softer rock went. The harder igneous rock that forms Cnicht and its neighbour Moelwyn Mawr stayed.
A true horn, the National Park Authority says, is “created by glacial excavation in four directions” and is common in the Alps. In Wales the shape “is less perfectly developed”.
By the Park Authority’s own account, Moelwyn Mawr is the closer copy of a Matterhorn. Cnicht just has the better angle.
Walking Britain puts the same thing in a walker’s terms. The summit “is the end of fine ridge”, and the pyramid “is in fact a cross section of the mountain”.
So you walk up the ridge, not up the face.
The two short scrambles
Near the top, Walking Britain’s guide says, “the way steepens and there are a couple of short scrambles before you reach the summit”.
That is the whole of the technical difficulty on this mountain.
A short scramble is a few metres of rock where you use your hands for balance. Neither guide describes exposure on it.
If the rocky steps on the Miners’ Track did not trouble you, these will not either.
The ridge on Moel Siabod is a graded grade 1 scramble that you can walk round. Cnicht’s rock steps are shorter than that and carry no grading. Crib Goch is a different sport.
Over the top is where the navigation starts
Most first-time visitors expect the difficulty to be the climb. On Cnicht it is the descent.
The route does not return along the ridge. It continues north-east to the shore of Llyn yr Adar, then turns for home across open moorland.
Walking Britain’s guide calls this “wild country” with “the walkers relatively few”. The path towards Cwm Corsiog is “in places very sketchy”.
The mountain is easy to climb and easy to lose your line on afterwards.
From there the route drops west to Llyn Cwm-y-foel, following “one of the small streams that tumble down the mountainside”. It crosses the dam and picks up a clear path back into Cwm Croesor.
In clear weather this is a lovely, lonely hour. In cloud it is a map-and-compass hour, and the right OS sheet for this corner matters more here than on the summit. The Park Authority lists OL18 for Croesor.
If you would rather not, go back the way you came. The ridge is obvious in both directions.
The valley you walk home through
Cwm Croesor is a worked landscape.
Croesor Quarry opened around 1856 and, from 1904, ran on its own hydro-electric plant. Its slate left by the Croesor Tramway, parts of which you can still walk, or down inclines like the Rhosydd Incline at the head of the cwm.
The last hour of the walk passes the inclines and the tramway bed.
None of it is signed as an attraction, which is part of why Croesor feels the way it does.
Who Cnicht is for, and who should wait a season
This is a good second mountain, and a good first one for someone who has already done a rough valley walk.
- The Park Authority says the ground “will be wet and steep” in places, with boots and waterproofs essential.
- Dogs go on a lead, because the route crosses farmland.
Wait if you have not yet walked on a path that stops being a path.
The stretch past Llyn yr Adar is that kind of ground. A first day on the Llyn Idwal loop or a valley walk teaches you what a faint path looks like. Learn that before you need to follow one.
Check the Snowdonia mountain forecast for cloud base rather than rain. Cnicht in rain is fine. Cnicht with the top in cloud takes away the only reason to go past the summit.
We compile and explain public route and safety information. We guide nobody and sell nothing on the hill.
Park in the village car park, not on the lane. It is small, and on most days that is all the space Croesor has.
