Snowdon

The Welsh name for this mountain, Yr Wyddfa, means the burial mound. The English name means snow hill. One culture looked at the highest peak in Wales and saw the tomb of a giant who wore a cloak sewn from the beards of the kings he had beaten. The other looked at it and made a note of the colour. The mountain stands 3,560 feet above northwest Wales, climbers training for the 1953 Everest expedition rehearsed on its crags, and a rack railway has been carrying the less committed to the summit since the Victorian era.

This map shows a mountain built by ice. The contour lines radiate from the summit into a series of glacial cwms, the great amphitheaters that hold the lakes of Glaslyn and Llyn Llydaw on the eastern side. The lines sharpen along Crib Goch, the knife-edge arête that forms the most exposed section of the Snowdon Horseshoe, and along the connecting ridge to Y Lliwedd. Between the arêtes, the wider spacing of the valley floors completes the pattern: steep rock walls and scooped hollows arranged around a single summit.