Whilst I understand and am OK with the bike ban on SNowdon, i wondered if it falls foul of the ban to push a bike up?

I could then ride down after the 5pm cut-off?

Anyone done this?

i wondered if it falls foul of the ban to push a bike up?

Yes

From the NP website:

10.00am to 5.00pm from 1st May – 30th September – Please do not cycle to or from the summit of Snowdon during this period.

I’d consider walking alongside your bike not to be cycling, and to be no threat to the enjoyment or safety of walkers, and fine in terms of the voluntary agreement. But that does mean pushing up, not pushing and riding when it eases off a bit.

Other views may differ, obviously. And there’s still plenty of daylight to start climbing at 5pm if you wanted to be doubly sure. Plus I reckon there would be still plenty of walkers on the main paths between 5 and 6, so it might spoil your own enjoyment.

As martin says, you won’t be flouting the ban but it may still be busy and worth doing it a little later. Plenty of light at the moment

Pushing is not cycling 🙂

Or. You could cycle UP before 10am. And then walk your bike back down after 10am.

Or am I missing something?

How come you are so keen to start riding down @ 5pm @lardman?

The first horrid part on tarmac is not subject to the ban so you could start off from Llanberis after 4pm ish. There’s a very obvious gate onto the mountain track after the tarmac climb.

Just have kids/wife demands around 8ish to be back for. If i start at 5, it’ll be dark by the time i get back down.

As nice as it would be to see the sunset, that window of opportunity is closed to me!

3hrs (pushing-walking) up for an old bloke like me, with 1 down?

I don’t even live on the same land mass as you, so feel free to take my input with a large pinch of salt. But trying to be objective about it, I’d say pushing your bike would be totally against the spirit of the agreement (ban).

Tell your wife you won’t be back until 9. Simple.

One extra hour, to indulge your hobby when you’re in a place you’re rarely at isn’t a groundbreaking or unreasonable ask.

4 hour round trip is good. Down at 9, still be light.

You’ve your whole life to put your kids to bed. They’d rather have a father that did something they could look up to than a sap that gives everything up for them.

If you start at 5 it won’t be dark by the time you get down. It’s 3hrs to the top MAX, even bimbling.. Less than an hour to get down… And if the wife demands you’re home by a certain time then your splunge thrucket broke and it took you 30 minutes to fix it! Couldn’t be helped, sorry. Jesus how long have you been married for?!

I’d consider walking alongside your bike not to be cycling, and to be no threat to the enjoyment or safety of walkers, and fine in terms of the voluntary agreement. But that does mean pushing up, not pushing and riding when it eases off a bit.

You may not consider it to be so,but it would be very much again the spirit of the agreement that people have worked very hard to get, and as I understand it is a little precarious anyways.
Please don’t, chances are you’ll only attract tuts or end up having ‘nobody’s going to win here’ conversations with people who are less than gruntled.

as others have said, although not against the letter of the voluntary ban, it is against the spirit of it. every time i go up there (biking and walking) it seems to be getting more and more popular with bikers – some completely flouting the rules and other pushing it (excuse the pun), so with the ever increasing number of walkers it’s only a matter of time until it’s no bikey bikey with conflicting user requirements if we push it (couldn’t resits a second time!).

if you google camping llanberis at Llwyn Celyn Bach, they have directions on there on how to access the llanberis path form the back of their site, it meant you could do about a 1/3 of the climbing and then join the path at the first train stop – most of it ride-able, meanes you can ste off about 4 form llannberis

If there’s that much of an issue, maybe they could consider bikes and walkers on alternate weekdays. Even if we only had Thursday and Thursday, that seem more fair to me. Or is it just a case of walkers having more old folk on local access forum groups?

Just playing devils advocate.

If there’s that much of an issue, maybe they could consider bikes and walkers on alternate weekdays. Even if we only had Thursday and Thursday, that seem more fair to me. Or is it just a case of walkers having more old folk on local access forum groups?

but that would be be unenforceable and would lead to more issue as bikers thinking they had a clear run, plough into a group of walkers who breaks the the ban through ignorance or not caring. the issue with snowdon is, that on a nice day it’s just so bloody busy and i can only imagine post covid staycations will exacerbate the issue

Seems it’s not a very good idea then. Fair enough.

The wife/children conundrum is of my own doing TBF… neither of them has asked me to be back early. I’m just trying to consider all needs etc:

I guess the two other days i have riding at Antur Stiniog will see me with as much riding as is fair.

If mtbikes were banned from Snowdon who exactly would enforce the ban out of interest.

The same people that enforce no riding on footpaths.

If i do Snowdon i get to the top before sunrise, only ever seen a couple of walkers on the way back down at this time.

So that’s no one enforcing it then. I’m genuinely interested in who people think would be on the ground stopping you as opposed to saying you can’t.

If it becomes a problem with people flouting the ban, expect fences with gates across the paths every hundred metres or other path alterations to make riding very not fun.

3hrs (pushing-walking) up for an old bloke like me, with 1 down?

It’s more than enough. TBH though Snowdon is just a tick box, it’s not even a very good ride/push. I’ve done it in late April, and even then people felt it was OK to challenge me, coming down Rangers I gave way to that many walkers that it wasn’t flowy or enjoyable, and one shouted and dived out of the way in the style of soldiers in war films when a grenade is thrown…(That was actually pretty funny)

It’s an outdoor mall for the Cotswold set, and they’ve claimed it as their own, give it a swerve. At least it keeps them all in one place, and everywhere else is less busy as a result.

It’s more than enough. TBH though Snowdon is just a tick box, it’s not even a very good ride/push. I’ve done it in late April, and even then people felt it was OK to challenge me, coming down Rangers I gave way to that many walkers that it wasn’t flowy or enjoyable, and one shouted and dived out of the way in the style of soldiers in war films when a grenade is thrown…(That was actually pretty funny)

It’s an outdoor mall for the Cotswold set, and they’ve claimed it as their own, give it a swerve. At least it keeps them all in one place, and everywhere else is less busy as a result.

It is indeed only a checkbox item for me too. But, you may be right enough and i’ll just give it a miss.

TBH though Snowdon is just a tick box

Well, that’s one opinion – and many would certainly disagree.

The Rangers path is a great trail and if you go down it on a weekday evening and I bet you’ll have a great ride.

Looking forward to doing it again myself next month.

The Rangers path is a great trail

Hmmm, people say that about Nan Beild too, and that’s maybe interesting for about 2 mins at the top, and then was a dull-ish field drop…But yeah, I agree, if you have to do Snowdon, don’t do it at the weekend.

people say that about Nan Beild too

I’m starting to see a pattern here. Do you think perhaps it could be you?

Nan Bield is superb almost all the way down if you give it some stick.

Yep. I think it’s s great ride too.

I also have zero problems with the agreement – both sticking to the letter and spirit of it.

The fact is, the busiest natural tourist attraction in Wales is still open to MTBers.

If your response is “who’s going to stop me” then whether you ride snowdon or not may be the least of the problems – because where else in your life are you being a dick…

Nan Bield is superb almost all the way down if you give it some stick.

No, It’s windy and dull. It’s Ok-ish I suppose if your idea of good is a couple of corners and a sheep trail down the middle of a field.

I’d say pushing up is within the letter of the voluntary agreement, but against its spirit.

Pushing up with 800mm handlebars etc will still annoy walkers, and and will look like a cyclist ignoring the agreement.

No, It’s windy and dull. It’s Ok-ish I suppose if your idea of good is a couple of corners and a sheep trail down the middle of a field.

And people say this forum is populated by joyless contrarians.

Rode it a couple of years ago (up village path, down Rangers) the weekend before the summer ban came into place. We rode all the way to the halfway hut without problem, but it had been a cold winter, so the top half of the climb was on snow and pretty tough riding / pushing and there wasn’t a lot of fun there.

I’ll be honest, I think of it as a tick box. The climb up was pretty miserable and I was glad to be down again. The rangers path was fun, but I’m not so good with heights and didn’t enjoy the drop to the side (it’s not that bad really – I’m just rubbish at handling heights!) so the reality is that I endured, rather than enjoyed the experience.

We tried to be considerate, allowing walkers to pass, but there was a couple of other groups of riders that tore down the trail like they were racing between tapes, scattering people left and right. Pretty crap, TBH, and I suspect some of the mutterings from walkers that we heard as we rode were in some way justified based on how they had ridden through.

The bit that always makes me smile when I think back on the day, was the odd mix of people walking the last 100yds up the narrow trail to the summit. The top station was closed (still snowed in), so the train people were getting off at the next station down and walking up with the rest of us. We walked up with hikers that were crossing multiple peaks with full winter gear, ice axes, crampons – the lot! There were day hikers out of the valley wearing normal walking gear, day trippers from the train wearing flip-flops and t-shirts and us lot in regular MTB gear pushing bikes, sliding around in SPD boots. Never an odder assortment of people you would see!

And people say this forum is populated by joyless contrarians.

No it isn’t…

(sorry chakaping, I’m pulling your leg…)

I’d push up it, it’s within the rules and completely harmless. It can be a little frustrating as the path is now 90% rideable. You aren’t cycling, if it’s a weekday it will be quiet by then anyway and the harm that it does is absolutely zero.

If you were planning on going down the Ranger’s path an hour descent seems about right. If you are just going to go back down Llanberis just to say you’ve done it I would allow about half an hour provided you have tough tyres on, it’s very puncturey. Rangers (and, though you don’t have time for it, Rhydd Dhu) are both good but Llanberis is basically a motorway.

As for Nan Beild, I’ve ridden it a lot and it is just some fun corners followed by a strip through a field if you head south but the descent to the north is amazing.

I’d push up it, it’s within the rules and completely harmless. It can be a little frustrating as the path is now 90% rideable. You aren’t cycling, if it’s a weekday it will be quiet by then anyway and the harm that it does is absolutely zero.

Tend to agree. However, while a weekday makes a lot of difference normally, bear in mind ‘school holidays’ and post lockdown loons. It may not be all that quiet, sadly.

Rule One still applies, of course.

I’d suggest you’re better off getting up early and doing it in the morning rather than on an evening.

I think it took me and a mate about 1 hour 50 to get from the car park in Llanberis to the summit – 2 hours 35 for up and down (moving time). We picked a bad day to try and get down telegraph after Rangers as there was a marathon running up it – we got about halfway down before standing to one side whilst 1000 people ran past.

We cycled the vast majority of the way up other than the points I previously mentioned where it was a push / carry.

Or just go and ride Drum instead. Far quieter and you can ride it flat out so far more fun. Snowdon is great if you want practice for pushing up far bigger hills or to just tick the summit.

If mtbikes were banned from Snowdon who exactly would enforce the ban out of interest.

There are about half a dozen full time Wardens on the ground who would probably call the police in the event of confrontation *should a ban be put in place*

At the moment there is no ban. and the relevant paths are still classed as bridleways. Provided we (mountain bikers) respect the voluntary agreement that *we* mountain bikers have reached in order to maintain the status-quo, there is nothing to enforce. By going against the agreement (spirit or letter) you are just pissing on everyone else’s chips.

I think the ruling is no bikes on the mountain between these times as per the ranger last year when we arrived at the bottom gate at 4:30pm with the intention of a 30 mins push. It took a grand total of 1h59 mins from the car park at Llamberis . With everything rule one of life applies “Dont be a dick”
Riding on the mountain because its there is like Nan Bield ,you ride it because its there , it might not be the best descent in the world but its sort of fun. Enjoy

Well I’m pleased so say I’m not breaking the agreement and have climbed and biked regularly all over the area for the past 20 years and have yet to meet a warden on the hills. Still good bit of STW slagging off when you ask a question always helps a slow Friday morning pass.

Just have kids/wife demands around 8ish to be back for.

maybe you should demand she STFU? That is not how healthy relationships work. Imagine the uproar if the husband demanded the wife to be back at a set time.