Snowdon + Ranger Path Questions

sirichmond

Morning all,

A few mates are thinking of hitting Snowdon in June so I am doing a bit of research for them and hopefully you guys can help out.

1. Are you allowed to push up even during the riding ban hours?
2. How long to push up not ride?
3. As average riders how long for the descent?
4. Any other advice and info.

Many Thanks
Simon

Majski

No rule about pushing up, so fully valid to push up in the afternoon then ride down at 5 straight to the pub.

I've not done the rangers but I think Llanberis takes about 20 mins down depending on if your legs can handle it in one run. Rangers is supposed to be a bit more tech so probably 30 mins or so.

Push up from llanberis took me about 3hrs with stops

miss notax

We did Snowdon a few weeks ago and it was ace

Took us about 2.5 hours to ride / push up Llanberis, and then about an hour in total I guess to come down Rangers and then cross over (which is a push up and over!) to finish up on the Telegraph descent. This takes you back into Llanberis.

I would have loved to do Llanberis as a descent as it looked great fun and (more importantly!) mostly rideable by mere mortals like me. Sadly there were too many walkers when we did it, so that wasn't practical. Rangers was fun but parts of it were very rocky and techy - probably rideable, but not by me in an xc lid with no body armour. I probably rode about 80% of it. When I go back (in the next month or so to do Llanberis up and down) I will wear a full face, the sheer rockiness and potential to come off justifies it in my book. I would also take my Kona as opposed to my Orange - more travel would have been good on Rangers!!!

Bloody good fun but go fully prepared with maps, first aid kits, more layers etc - we were lucky with the weather, but I can see how it could turn VERY nasty VERY quickly. There was still snow at the top (and it was indeed snowing!) when we did it :shock:

Majski

If you do the llanberis it's definately fun on the down. I take my DH bike down it occasionally but tend to do it midweek when there's not many walkers there so you can smash it. I'm a culprit for never taking maps for provisions though - bit daft really. The whole of llanberis path is dead easy to ride, even at good speed. It's not steep at all and the most intimidating bit is a scree slope with a drop to the side, but as that's the very top bit a lot of guys I know just start from the rail bridge below that and miss that bit out as its the only dangerous bit.

Full face and knee pads recommended though if you're hitting llanberis at speed, it's pretty much a 4 mile rock garden

miss notax

Majski wrote:

Full face and knee pads recommended though if you're hitting llanberis at speed, it's pretty much a 4 mile rock garden

I can't wait to give this a go (as I was riding up I was imagining how much fun it would be to ride down!)

Majski

the long section with all the rock steps after the first railway bridge batters your arms, but after that it's nice and flowy. You can get down really quickly. It's just hard doing it when there's loads of walkers.

ilovedirt

1. yes
2. about two - two and a half hours
3. 40 mins to an hour, depending how often you stop/how many punctures you get
4. do llanberis up, rangers and telegraph valley down, well worth it. Full face and pads would be a good idea but not essential, as miss notax said, there's bits of the rangers that are pretty steep and tech, i managed to ride it all but a 20 yard section (you'll know which bit a mean when you get to it), however there is a video of me falling off trying to ride it Llanberis down could be fun as well (not done that yet), but you get more riding time down the rangers. Oh and most of all, enjoy yourself

Chinley Churner

Good fun day out.. we had a blast doing it in November. Up was a bit of a slog, my Garmin read -14C at the top but coming back down was fantastic.

sirichmond

Thanks for all the replys guys and gals, all advice taken on board.

Simon

Dirtydog11

My advice would be to aim to get to the summit 1hr-1h1/2hr before sunset as most of the walkers will be off the mountain, did Llanberis-Llanberis last year and had a completely clear run top to bottom 8) .

The scree slope on the Llaberis decent should be aproached with caution as its all to easy to pick up speed but due to the nature of the surface very difficult to slow down again.

I really enjoyed it, it's just a pity there's no uplift service!

Hoping to do the ranger path this year.

DodgeT

sirichmond wrote:

1. Are you allowed to push up even during the riding ban hours?

I was under the impression that your not supposed to be on the trails with your bike, whether riding or not, between the hours in the "banned" months.

tomstickland

I'm going up with a group in July.
I reckon we should start by doing Llanberis up and Llanberis down.
Go back another time for the rangers path.
Does that sound like a reasonable plan?

compo

Sounds like a solid plan. Do the easy stuff and work up. Simplezzz

DodgeT

Rangers isn't dificult, there's about 20 - 30 yds of really rocky stuff, other than that, a lot of it is pretty average.
Next time for me will be beris down, reckon it will be more fun.

tomstickland

Rode it on Thursday. A lot of fun.

2 hours 15 minutes up. I think you could descent it easily in 20 minutes. We stopped a lot for various reasons.

Report here: http://www.mbswindon.co.uk/mountain-bike-snowdon-llanberis/