Llanberis Pass
The Llanberis Pass is the most dramatic mountain pass in Wales, a great glacial valley cutting through the heart of the Snowdonia massif between the summit of Snowdon and the Glyderau ridge above Llanberis in a landscape of magnificent mountain scale whose combination of the glacier-smoothed valley walls, the great cirque lakes of Glaslyn and Llydaw visible above and the continuous mountain panorama visible along the length of the pass creates the most completely satisfying single mountain valley in Wales. The A4086 road through the pass provides one of the finest mountain driving experiences in Britain.
The glacial geology of the Llanberis Pass is among the most instructive and most accessible in Wales, the smooth-sided walls carved by the glacier that occupied this valley during the last Ice Age providing textbook examples of glacial erosion on a scale that can be appreciated from the road below. The roches moutonnées, the smooth glacier-carved rock bosses on the valley floor, the hanging valleys visible high on the valley walls and the moraine ridges deposited by the retreating glacier all provide evidence of the ice that shaped this landscape.
The walking from the Llanberis Pass provides access to both the Snowdon massif and the Glyderau above the opposite valley wall, the routes to Crib Goch, the Snowdon Horseshoe and the summits of Glyder Fawr and Glyder Fach all starting from the valley floor. The combination of the pass scenery and the quality of the walking accessible from it makes the Llanberis Pass the most important single mountain landscape in Wales.