View of Moel Siabod summit & ridge from our breakfast spot

The final element to Mikes birthday celebration was a hike up Moel Siabod from Dolwyddelan. A couple of years back we did a recce with Joanna for a Ramblers walk on the hills behind the village and asked her if she had climbed the mountain from this side, rather than from Capel Curig which seems to be the more popular route. She said she had but it was very boggy on the descent. Well it has been such a dry summer this year that we thought it would be a good option.

We decided to stay at the village pub on Saturday night to give us an early(ish) start on Sunday morning. Glad we did as it was the 1 year anniversary for the Y Gwydyr’s renovation and there was live folk music. We sat in the restaurant section eating our meal and enjoying listening to the music. Chatting to the band members they mentioned that they had also enjoyed the Peregrine Circus performance and the musicians had come to their gig afterwards and joined in on a couple of the sessions. Small world.

We woke up to a perfect day on Sunday morning. We decided to start early as it was going to be a hot day. The trail led us steeply out of the village to some fields where we got our first glimpses of our destination. We then entered the woods on a gentle forestry track for a couple of km which was a good warm up for the legs. Nice and cool and very pretty in the dappled morning sunshine.  At about 300m we started to climb more steeply up a path roughly following the Ystumiau river which is the outflow from Llyn y Foel (our breakfast destination) It became quite warm in the sunshine without a breath of wind. I posed at the top of a pretty waterfall, nearly lost my footing which would not have been much fun.

It was around this point we should have crossed the river and stayed on the right hand side. However, a style fooled us and without paying close attention to the map we wandered off in the wrong direction for a short distance. Not an issue as there were so many small paths we were able to easily work our way up over several rocky outcrops to Llyn y Foel – our late breakfast stop. This gave us a great view of M Siabod and its cliff face as well as other walkers making their way round the lake from the Pont Cyfyng trailhead.

Initially we had considered ascending via the Daear Ddu ridge, but my new Huka ultra cushioned boots aren’t really ideal for scrambling. So we went along the footpath beneath the ridge which was steep and rocky enough. Lots of photo ops and there was a welcome breeze so we both really enjoyed the hike up to the summit. The view of Snowdon, and its surrounding peaks was outstanding. Also great that there were not that many other hikers at the trig point. I especially enjoyed looking over to Allt Fawr and Moel Druman which we had climbed earlier in the year.

We thought that we would have an easy walk through the woods approaching the lake. However, winter storms last year had caused a lot of damage and the footpath had been obliterated so we had to pick our way across fallen trees and debris. Although there was ‘theoretically’ a zig zag footpath down through the woods once we reached the lake we decided to stay on a logging track. Bit tedious and hot as the forest to our right had been logged out so it was not the beautiful woodland walk I had anticipated with my rose coloured spectacles!

The route back from the lake was a bit of a slog, on a forest track, the main highlights being

• The view of the lake
• The view of Castle Dolwyddelan, which we enjoyed whilst eating our peanut buttie sandwich
• Eating lots of blackberries
• and sharing an ice cream when we got back to the car.

It was a perfect day for this hike and I am glad now that when we look across to this mountain from our cycles along the ridge to Llanrwst we will have great memories of this day and our first ascent of Moel Siabod.

Below is a map of our hike, as well as some photos in a screen show from our day.