Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: Snowdonia

Here's a closeup of the tracks, with the cog in the middle.

Here's a better look at one of the steam locomotives.

Here's the extreme grade to the summit. I don't actually precisely what it is. Some particularly ambitious people were jogging to the summit alongside the tracks.

The Snowdon Mountain Railway, while only 4.7 miles long, is so steep that it's a cog railway. It's also 2'7.5" narrow-gauge. Built in 1896, it is still partly steam powered. Here you can see both steam and diesel power. The terminal at the bottom of the mountain is at Llanberis, which is also a station on the Llanberis Lake Railway and the Carnarvonshire Railway. The Summit station is integrated into the cafe mentioned earlier.

Here's a view from the summit. The summit was in the clouds when we arrived, and gradually cleared up. In the meantime, it was cold, wet, and generally unpleasant. The crowds were enormous, in spite of the weather and the moderately difficult route up, and the cafe was so overcrowded that it was physically difficult to move in and out. This sounds like a frivilous, yuppie, complaint, but when it's this crowded you need restrooms. For both food and restrooms, it seemed hopelessly inadequate.

This is the benchmark at the summit, which is actually a mound of rocks that probably isn't natural. It was crowded with people, and there was a line. The lines on the benchmark indicate the distances to different landmarks.

I took several photos, at different exposures, from this position. I was trying to get the cloud ceiling, as I thought it was dramatic.

This, if I'm not mistaken, is another angle on the reservoir, but the gloom makes it less dramatic.

I don't remember the name of this body of water, but my understanding was that it was an artificial reservoir. further information would be welcome. I got especially lucky with this photo in terms of the exposure and the reflection in the water.

As on many hikes, most of the routes up Snowdon give wide panoramic views of the landscape. Assisting in this is that Wales has relatively few trees.

Here's another view of the landscape on Snowdon.

Snowdon, at 1085 metres, or 3,560 feet, is the tallest mountain in Wales. Recently, I was in a group who climbed it, making it my first summit in many years. This was my first proper film photo on the way up.