NEN Gallery

As the Snowdon ice caps became larger its glaciers spread into nearby valleys pushing over low cols and through the aretes of small glaciers it was overriding to form glacial breaches. Finally, as the ice sheet grew to cover all but the highest peaks, many of the lower slopes were smothered by the all-enveloping ice. During the early part of the ice age individual glaciers developed on most north facing mountain sides. The mountains of north Wales have been high enough to attract sufficient snowfall to develop glaciers whenever the average temperatures were only 3 degrees centigrade below present. The high cwms of the area contained small glaciers as recently as 12,000 - 10,000 years ago. Even during the 17th century travellers taking the Post road (the A5 today) referred to the ice topped mountains of the area.