Pen-y-Gwryd
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Pen-y-Gwryd is a hotel [1] at the head of Nantygwryd and Nant Cynnyd in Gwynedd and a quarter of a mile from the boundary with Conwy in northern Snowdonia, close to the foot of Snowdon. It is located at the junction of the A4086 and the A498 from Beddgelert and Nant Gwynant about a mile from the head of the Llanberis Pass. It is the also site of a former Roman marching camp which encompasses the present road junction.
The well known Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel was originally a simple farmhouse dating from 1811 and became an inn c1847 under Harry and Ann Owen who between 1860 and 1896 extended and rebuilt it into the present hotel. Arthur and Florence Lockwood further developed the property and in the 1920's created the small trout lake, Llyn Lockwood, opposite the hotel. During the second world war, the hotel was taken over by Lake House School from Bexhill-on-Sea and eventually in 1947 bought by Chris and Jo Briggs whose energies built it into the important mountaineering hotel that it has become. Under Chris Briggs, Pen-y-Gwryd became a Mountain Rescue post and the plaque is still to be found at the main entrance.
The pioneer Everest climber George Mallory stayed there with his wife in 1914 but the hotel's great mountaineering connection largely stems from the first successful Everest expedition in 1953 and the Kangchenjunga expedition in 1955, where training and testing of Oxygen equipment for those expeditions took place, at Helyg near Capel Curig. On the right as you enter the hotel there is a Tyrolean style Stuberl with the signatures, written on the ceiling, of the team that did the first ascent of Everest in 1953 and of the successfull first ascent of Kangchenjunga in 1955, these include Sir Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgay, Sir John Hunt, Charles Evans, George Band, Joe Brown, John Angelo Jackson, Tony Streather, Tom Mackinnon, Norman Hardie, Neil Mather, John Clegg and others including Noel Odell from Mallory's 1924 expedition and Chris Bonnington of later successes. There are many photographs and exhibits provided by the original team members in the main bar and guest lounge. Each year, now every five years, Pen-y-Gwryd hosts the Everest and Kangchenjunga reunions.
The "PYG track", one of the routes leading to the summit of Snowdon, begins opposite the youth hostel at Pen-y-Pass, and is believed by many to be derived from the initials ("P-y-G"). Older maps, however, label the path as the "Pig track" and the name derives from Bwlch y Moch (the Pigs' Gap), where the path passes through a spur. The Old Miners' Track from the Snowdon copper mines (incorporated into the modern A4086 road between Pen-y-Pass and Pen-y-Gwryd) continues northwards beyond Pen-y-Gwryd, skirting Glyder Fach to Bwlch Tryfan and Dyffryn Ogwen.
[edit] References
Snowdonia, National Park Guide Number 2, edited Edmund Vale, HMSO 1958/1960
