Photo © FirmBee

Every year, Snowdonia National Park publishes detailed statistics about visitor numbers to Snowdon. The data is captured using infrared counters positioned at the start of each of the six main Snowdon footpaths and then collated at the end of the year. Beware that data for 2020 and 2021 is heavily affected by the pandemic and sadly data for 2022 was hit by a number of technical issues. The full reports for recent years are available to download below.

The busiest day of the week to climb Snowdon is Saturday

This is perhaps not all that surprising. The split over Monday to Friday is pretty even but it is interesting to note how many more weekend visitors choose to climb Snowdon on a Saturday rather than a Sunday. So if you’re looking for a (bit of a) quieter day out over the weekend, considering visiting on a Sunday.

The Llanberis Path is the most popular route up Snowdon

Widely regarded as the ‘easiest’ but also the longest and definitely the busiest with nearly twice as many walkers taking the Llanberis Path than the next most popular route. The three quieter options are the Snowdon Ranger and Rhyd Ddu paths to the west and the Watkin Path to the south where you’re much more likely to have a peaceful walk. Until you reach the summit that is.

August is the busiest month to climb Snowdon

Again not breaking news with nearly all UK schools on holiday during August. Visitor numbers are less in the shoulder season (April, May, September and October) when the weather is usually still ok to climb. It’s also interesting to note that there are still many thousands of people climbing Snowdon in the winter when conditions are much worse and technical skills are required. Data shown is from 2019, the last full year before the pandemic.

Snowdon is getting busier year on year

The popularity of the mountain is clear to see and there’s nothing to suggest this trend isn’t going to continue. (2020 and 2021 figures were heavily affected by the pandemic).


If you’d like to view the full visitor monitoring reports for Snowdon, Ogwen & Idwal, Cader Idris and others, in both Welsh and English, you can download them as PDFs from the links below: