Qualla: Glyderau

Glyderau: Introduction

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. Look at a map of Snowdonia and three great mountain blocks line up across it. Snowdon to the south, the Carneddau to the north, and between them, narrow but unmistakable, the Glyderau - eleven peaks running east from Llandegai to Capel Curig, five of them above 3,000 feet, and Tryfan at their eastern end forming what is widely considered the most beautiful mountain in Wales. The range gets its name from the highest pair: Glyder Fawr ("big heap of stones") and Glyder Fach ("small heap of stones"). Sir Ifor Williams traced "Glyder" to an older Welsh word - Cludair - meaning, again, a heap of stones. Welsh mountains rarely make grand claims for themselves.

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

Glyderau: Between Snowdon and the Carneddau

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Glyderau form the central spine of Snowdonia. They are separated from Snowdon to the south by the Llanberis Pass and the Nant Peris valley, and from the Carneddau to the north by the deeper, wider trench of the Nant Ffrancon and the Ogwen Valley. The A5 - Telford's London-to-...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Glyderau: Where Two Continents Hit

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Keith Williamson, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Glyderau were born in the Ordovician period, about 500 million years ago, when two land masses on opposite sides of the Iapetus Ocean drifted into each other and pushed up what became the Snowdonia massif. The volcanic and sedimentary rocks that resulted have been wearing dow...

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Image: Keith Williamson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Glyderau: Cwm Idwal and the Snowdon Lily

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. The hanging valley of Cwm Idwal is now a national nature reserve, and for good reason. Its dark cliffs preserve some of the most southerly Arctic-Alpine plants in Britain - cool-climate species that retreated north as glaciers melted but found a permanent refuge on these shaded l...

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

Glyderau: Electric Mountain

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. On the western flank of the range, inside Elidir Fawr, is one of the strangest things in any British mountain: the Dinorwig Power Station, a 1,728-megawatt pumped-storage hydroelectric scheme installed in a vast artificial cavern carved out between 1974 and 1984. At night, when d...

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

Glyderau: Walls That Pre-Date the Roads

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. The Glyderau and Carneddau passed to the National Trust in 1951, in lieu of death duties on the Penrhyn Estate. Seven thousand hectares, half of it registered common land, came under conservation management at a stroke. There are still eight tenanted farms on the estate. The Trus...

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