Advice Needed: Planning My First Trip To Snowdon (Early May bank holiday)

Hi guys,
Posting for the first time, yay!
Need some tips from the community if possible, I travel a lot and been living in London for a few years now and always blaming myself for not travelling as much within the UK and we got here some oh the best hikes and landscapes in Europe.
So this year it is time! and Early May bank holiday I'd like to go up to Snowdon.

Questions (and some of them might be easy or even dumb so bare with me please):
- Which OS Explorer map should I get to cover the way up from bottom to top?
- Can I do wild camping any around the area? I'll assume yes since our Boss Dave here does it a few times :D
- I take my photography seriously ( instagram.com/tiagohiggs/ ) so when camping wild is there a best place for sunset/sunrise/galaxy shots that you know? or is it the case of "summit is obviously best"
- Any free place to park the car before hiking up? opinions
- Am I forgetting to ask which is the best peak? in terms of challenge/view/etc

I travel a lot but not so much on the camping side so thanks guys, I am sure I got more questions but let's see how this goes from here.

Regards,
Tiago

Best map to use is the OS OL17 1:25000 Snowdon and Conwy map.

'Free' parking is a bit of a premium especially on bank holidays. There are some lay-bys coming up from Nant Peris but you need to get there very, very early. The carpark at Pen Y Pass isn't free and it's usually full by 7:30am to give you an idea of how early you've got to be. There is parking in Llanberis if you want to go up the infinitely dull 'Llanberis Path', there's a £4/day one near, but not quite opposite the Snowdon Railway station. Snowdonia wardens are shit hot on ticketing cars that haven't paid or are parked badly blocking the roads/not fully in lay-bys.

I'm a big fan of the Watkin Path, lovely long path that approaches around the back of the col between Snowdon and Y Lliwedd, loads of places to wild camp on that side of the mountain, very quiet too. Parking at Nant Gwynant, again not free but reasonable (take coins, they don't do cards or notes). The col would make for some excellent photos at sunrise. Y Lliwedd doesn't take too much effort to scramble up to get really excellent shots of the Snowdon horseshoe.

Hi Penny,
Really helpful! I'll start by getting the OS map and take some time to learn how to read it.
Park busy by 7.30am...ooouch! considering I am 4h away, that would be an early wake up. Well, we do what we gotta do, right!.
I see a lot of people mentioning this Pen-y-Pass path, any specific reason for this?

There are two paths from Pen Y Pass, the PYG track and the Miners'. The PYG is more entertaining. All the paths up are well marked. Pen Y Pass has an info centre, café and a warden's office, there's also a YHA bunkhouse opposite.

Haha, "Boss Dave". It's funny because I'm actually just a loser who's okay at building websites :P

Penny's given you some pretty solid answers there but here's some more anyway!

Best Locations
For sunset and sunrise photos you're obviously better off on a peak somewhere because otherwise your view will be blocked by a great big mountain. Crib Goch is best for sunrise and Garnedd Ugain (or somewhere near by) is best for sunset, as the sun sets behind the mountains if you're on Crib Goch. Just make sure that wherever you are you're able to either sleep there or get down in the dark. Having run down off Crib Goch after watching the sunset before it's easy to forget how the rocks instantly become slippery as soon as the sun's gone, due to condensation.

And I wouldn't say that Snowdon summit is necessarily the best place for photos. Firstly it's very cliche and will have been photographed a million times, secondly there will almost certainly be other people up there, getting in your way. I always do my best to avoid other people.

Actually, you might do well to be up Y Lliwedd for sunrise! It's to the South of Snowdon and is part of the Snowdon Horseshoe but is much, MUCH quieter than the other peaks. From up there you'd have a great view of the sunrising and there's loads of cool rocks and shapes around there.

Parking
I've never had trouble parking in one of the three laybys between Pen-y-pas and Nant Peris. I guess on a hot summer's day in the holidays then they could fill up but the fact is that they're not near to any convenient walker-friendly paths and so most people wouldn't bother with them. Though the laybys are next to popular bouldering sites so those are the guys who are most likely to park there. But the laybys are pretty big so there should be enough room for everyone! (And they're free).

Pen-y-pass
This is the starting point of the Pyg Track which is the most commonly used path for getting up and down Snowdon. That's why you hear about Pen-y-pas a lot. The largest car park for Snowdon is at Pen-y-pas, as well as a big Youth Hostel. The Pyg Track is a good path but there's always going to be a ton of people walking on it in both directions. I've not done the Watkin Path in ages and I've only ever gone down it, not up, but it's a really nice route, passing the old slate mines and running alongside a little river. If you do the Watkin then you'll be parking on the other side of the mountain.

Seeing as how you're a 4 hour drive away I'd suggest you drive over the night before and then sleep in your car. If you're confident about the route up then walk in the dark to get somewhere for sunrise. Otherwise walk up once it's day time and then be somewhere cool for sunset.

Llanberis Path
Regarding Penny's comment on it, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this path is such a bore. I've only walked the second half of it (twice) and it's such a mundane trudge. In my last video where I sleep on the ice I walk up along the Llanberis Path and originally I had a clip of me saying "God damn, this track is so freakin' boring!" but I cut it out because it sounded negative and also the views were amazing. The reason it sucks as a path is because it's just so long with no interesting features. And you can see miles ahead on it so you know you still have so far to go. I mean, there's a train track running alongside it! That should be enough to suggest it's not going to be the most interesting route :P

Best Peak
Crib Goch. Of course I'd say that, but then, it's true!

Wild Camping
Yeah, you can wild camp wherever you want :)

Here's some pictures for ya! Because I like to be helpful and also because I LOVE Google Maps.













Hope that's of some help to you! :)

uau guys! this is sick! I almost just need to get going...it's all done for me. Thanks so much!
Well, I guess there is not much to say now. If everything goes according to plan I'll hopefully have some nice photos and a nice edit to post here soon. :D
Thanks guys one more time.

No worries, Tiago! Glad I (we) could help :)

By the way, I checked out your Instagram and YouTube! Really cool stuff, mate.

www.instagram.com/tiagohiggs/
www.youtube.com/user... ...ing/videos

I need to code some stuff into this site to let people properly share their different social media channels, especially if they're travel-related. I could also code a new subforum for tech related info because there's a few of us on here who like our cameras.

Thanks Dave.
ha yes, good call mate. People are getting a lot into Gopro and everything these days.
Would be good a techy section for questions.