The Best Scrambling Guidebooks For North Wales
If you’re thinking of visiting North Wales to go scrambling, either roped or unroped, a guidebook is an absolute necessity to ensure you go the correct way and don’t end up off route and in a horrible situation.
A good guidebook will also help you decide where to go, given the weather forecast, and provide lots of extra information for planning a good day in the mountains.
There are three recent guidebooks available for scrambling in Snowdonia. The Cicerone Scrambles in Snowdonia is the oldest book, followed by the Northern Edge Books North Wales Scrambles and finally the newest guidebook for scrambling, the Rockfax Snowdonia Mountain Walks and Scrambles.
Out of these three, the Rockfax stands head and shoulders above the others. It’s presented in a modern style, with great line topos for the routes, great colour photos and loads of extra information to help you find the parking, approach and descent of the routes. The inclusion of proper mapping and QR codes to help navigate to the parking with a phone is a step forward for usability.
The Rockfax is also a great all-rounder guidebook as it includes easy rock climbing, ridge walks and winter climbs. This would be a perfect guidebook for anyone wanting one guide for mountain adventures in Snowdonia throughout the seasons without wanting a dedicated summer rock climbing guidebook. Have a look at our round up of climbing guidebooks if you’re interested in the current offering of climbing guidebooks.
It’s clear to see the benefit of the Rockfax topos (above) vs the Cicerone’s (below) black and white photos. In the 21st century I think guidebooks have moved on from black and white photos in these older style books. The Cicerone guide was last published in 1992 and it shows its age.
The actual quality of the text and route descriptions in each guide are actually very similar. Anyone used to reading guidebook descriptions and route finding from this will probably be fine as they do all have accurate descriptions, but the quality of the images in the Rockfax make it far easier to follow a route at a glance.
The Cicerone and Northern Edge guides both contain some slightly more esoteric scrambles, probably more for completeness rather than as a ringing endorsement to go and climb them! There is some scary loose ground on many of these off the beaten track scrambles which I would not recommend. There is slightly less than this in the Rockfax but still some scary routes if you get too far off piste. The inclusion of the the easy climbing and mountain walking in the Rockfax makes it a better all round guide for the mountain enthusiast rather than a pure scrambling resource which the other two books are.
The bottom line, the newest Rockfax is the best scrambling guidebook to buy for mountaineering in Snowdonia.