Qualla: Glyder Fach

Glyder Fach: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rickneary86, CC BY-SA 3.0. There is a slab of rhyolite the size of a small bus, weighing perhaps 25 tonnes, jutting straight out of the summit boulders of Glyder Fach. People walk to the end of it. Some take group photographs. The first time you see somebody do this from the air or from the next ridge over, the response is involuntary - the slab clearly cannot be doing what it is doing. The Welsh called it Y Gwyliwr, "the Sentinel." The English call it the Cantilever Stone. It has been balanced there since the ice retreated, demonstrating that geology does not need engineers to do unlikely things.

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Image: Rickneary86 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Glyder Fach: The Heap of Stones

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Blisco assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. Glyder Fach is the second-highest summit in the Glyderau range and the sixth-highest in Wales, reaching 994 metres above sea level. The name itself is a description. According to the medieval Welsh scholar Sir Ifor Williams, "Glyder" comes from the older Welsh "Gludair" - simply,...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Blisco assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Glyder Fach: The Cantilever and the Castle of the Winds

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Llywelyn2000, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two features dominate the summit zone. Y Gwyliwr - the Cantilever - is a long slab projecting roughly four feet horizontally from a pile of supporting stones near the top. It has been balanced this way since at least the start of the geological present, perhaps 10,000 years; nobo...

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Image: Llywelyn2000 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Glyder Fach: Bristly Ridge

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Voice of Clam, Public domain. The most celebrated approach to the summit from the north is Bristly Ridge - Y Grib Bigog in Welsh, "the bristly crest." It runs up the north face of the mountain from the col below Tryfan. The consensus grading is Scramble Grade 1, but it is at the upper end of that grade; some ...

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Image: Voice of Clam | Public domain

Glyder Fach: What the Cantilever Has Watched

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Terry Hughes, CC BY-SA 2.0. Climbers know the south face for Flying Buttress, a popular Grade IV route up a steep ridge of grey rhyolite that has been climbed since the 1930s. The whole massif sits between two great glacial valleys - the Llanberis Pass curving to the west and the Ogwen Valley running below ...

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Image: Terry Hughes | CC BY-SA 2.0

Glyder Fach: The English Indie Band Connection

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Butterworth, CC BY-SA 2.0. There is a final, smaller piece of fame to add to the dragons and the cantilevers. Glyder Fach and its sister peak Glyder Fawr feature in, and provide the setting for, the Half Man Half Biscuit song "Evening Of Swing (Has Been Cancelled)." The Birkenhead band has a long tradition...

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Image: Alan Butterworth | CC BY-SA 2.0