I am perched so precariously that the merest breath of wind could cause me to plummet some 1,000 feet down the side of the mountain. Just inches from my nose, the tracery of tiny patterns in the rock is crystal clear in the cold, perfect air. My every sinew and brain cell is concentrated on one small movement upward. I’m focused like never before in my life and fighting to control the urge to rush the maneuver when I know full well that what I must do is breathe deeply and move in a long, smooth stretch. Above all, I’m trying not to think of my fingernails tearing with the sudden downward plunge of my body ...
Mist swirls around me as I inch my way up the side of Mount Tryfan, one of the peaks clustered around Snowdon—at 3,564 feet the highest mountain in Wales and third highest in the British Isles. The immediate issue for me is where to place my right hand without upsetting my balance. Reaching up, I feel with fingertips for a crevice or ledge that will take my weight. I find nothing that will do the job alone, but if I combine the small outcrop of rock above with a tenuous foothold, I might be able to swing safely up and across the slab. Then one final, superhuman effort and I’m over the edge of the outcrop and onto the comparative safety of the ledge.
This raw experience of grappling up bare rock is almost primeval. Yes, you need arms, legs, the coordination that allows you to move just as your brain demands, and, of course, nerve—but that’s just having the right outfit on. The real stuff of climbing is bound up with a tremendous sense of place, of where exactly on earth you are at that precise moment. And here on Tryfan I am vibrantly present, in intimate contact with ancient rocks that are bigger, by a factor of zillions, than anything I’ve climbed before. The sheer tonnage of this corner of the British Isles is massively impressive, as is the wild beauty of its rugged landscape.
And now, from the relative security of the ledge, I can pause to look around me. High up here on the mountain, I find every sense is heightened, every detail thrown into sharp focus: a few puffs of cloud below, sparkling rock reaching up above me into a robin’s-egg-blue sky, and thick frost on everything that doesn’t move. I slowly take in the view across the mountaintops to the faraway coastline; the green valleys way below dotted with farmhouses; the baaing of distant sheep and the cry of the lone buzzard; the earthy scent of moss-covered stone. Up here my battered energy snacks and lukewarm tea taste to me like caviar and Champagne.
Since the end of the last century, Snowdonia, an area of about 840 square miles, has played a central role in the development of climbing in Britain. I am just one of many climbers, from total newcomers to weathered mountaineers, who come to this region to learn new techniques or to hone already tried-and-true skills.
In the 1950s new routes to Snowdon’s summit were forged by climbing greats Joe Brown, Don Whillans, and others. It was here among these breathtaking rugged mountains that George Mallory trained for his attempt to be the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest. And since Sir Edmund Hillary’s conquest of that mountain in May 1953, with Tenzing Norgay, he and his fellow climbers have regularly reunited at the hotel Pen-y-Gwryd in Nant Gwynant.
The Snowdonia national park authority has overseen the area—only 20 percent of which is actual mountain—since 1951. The rest is farmland, most of it privately owned, with Welsh sheep grazing the mountainsides in a landscape buffeted by the wind, rain, and snows that sweep across from the Irish Sea.
Well over half the people of the close-knit local village communities speak Welsh as their first language, giving the unsuspecting visitor the impression of having entered another world.
Until very recently Snowdon itself was still privately owned. Much of Britain was shocked to discover in July 1998—when an appeal was launched by the British National Trust to buy the mountain—that prior to then Snowdon had not, in fact, belonged to the nation. The campaign’s president, Sir Anthony Hopkins, a Welshman passionately committed to his homeland, donated £1 million (about $1.5 million) of his own money toward the £3.5 million asking price.
Testament to the regard of the entire nation for this beloved mountain was the fact that funds were raised in record time for its immediate purchase, with plenty left over to enable the Trust to move ahead on further conservation plans for the whole area. For a start, the familiar Welsh sheep that are such an integral part of the landscape will be partially replaced with indigenous Welsh black cows. (For Sir Anthony, it will be a gentler silencing of the lambs.) The different grazing habits of the cows will allow damaged hillsides to reestablish themselves. But some things about Snowdon will never change, which is, of course, the point of the acquisition, and it will still be possible to take the easy option up to the summit by means of the privately owned mountain railway (more than 100 years old and Britain’s only rack-and-pinion system).
Why are so many people increasingly drawn to the idea of scaling a mountain? Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Everest, famously answered “Because it is there.” But more tellingly, he went on to reflect, “Whom have we vanquished? None but ourselves.” No question for him: Getting to the top was more about overcoming inner mountains than real rock and stone. In quantifiable terms, the desire to climb probably comes down to one of two reasons: sheer curiosity (the need to see around the next corner; to literally, if necessary, surmount whatever obstacle is in the way) or a need to do the hardest thing better than anyone else.
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