Y RHINOGYDD - RHINOG FACH (WBMC 14) Traditional Cache

This cache is placed 709 metres abouve sea level, 20 metres south west of the summit cairn of the rugged, heathery mountain Rhinog Fach. The compartment that holds the pencil and log sheet is really only a micro & can't take trackables, although the whole container is larger and came from the U.S.A. (although it was made in China!)

The Rhinogs are a notoriously rugged chain of mountains between Trawsfynydd in the north and Barmouth in the south. Rhinog Fawr & Rhinog Fach present some of the roughest and toughest walking to be found anywhere in England and Wales. especially so if you are not following one of the few, often indistinct, paths that ascend their slopes.

As one web blog says “There are many crags on the northern side of Rhinog Fach, and I had to find a route between them over rough boulders and heather to a col 400m below the summit. It’s treacherous terrain where ankles can easily be twisted, either on unstable rocks or among clumps of heather.“
However, reaching their summits is well worth it for, if you are lucky with the weather, there will be wonderful views over to Lleyn Peninsula, Snowdonia, Trawsfynnyd, the Arennigs, Cader Idris and down to the beautiful Llyn Hywel, a lake which most people, myself included, think is the most perfectly sited in the whole of Wales. The book "Snowdonia to the Gower" has a lovely photo of the lake and mountains dusted in snow and on the facing page (pager 47) there just happens to be a photo of me in my youth nonchanantly leaning against the trig point on the summit of Diffwys

Getting to the top of Rhinog Fach is fairly straightforward if you are approaching from the south but from the northern pass of Bwlch Drws-Ardudwy one is confronted with a steep wall of featureless heather. you may be able to follow a faint track upward from SH665283 but the easiest route probably starts at the ladder stile over aa wall at SH660281. From here a reasonable (for the Rhinogs) path goes south past Lyyn Cwmhosan and up to a col. Just below this one should go left 90 degrees to an even fainter path that ascends a heather band between two boulder fields to a col north of the summit. From there it is an easy, almost horizontal stroll to the top.

Cache placed with the kind permission of Natural Resources Wales, who helpfully commented that geocaching is not considered damaging to the Rhinog Site of Special Scientific interest.

Congratualtions to joeksoap on his First to Find three and a half months after the cache was published