UKH

I am going to run the Snowdon horseshoe at the end of this month, I've walked it three times so know my way around reasonably well, and I've done Crib Goch a few times more.

It's just I note that on the Strava Snowdon horseshoe segment, and on Finlay Wild's blog post route map, the corner between the Snowdon summit and the Watkin path is cut for a more direct route down, what I assume is, a steep scree slope.

I have only ever followed the path from the summit down to the Watkin path, which is scree anyway.

I wondered if it's possible to explain any landmarks / pointers to cut that corner? FYI I'm not going for the record like Finlay ! but if it could save me a few minutes (and not be dangerous) I would quite like to try it. 

Edit: I've just plotted it both ways on a map and I think it only saves you about 200m of straight line distance so probably not much in it / not worth it for a punter like me!

It's very rough, we take that route on the Peris race and when racing you are knocking scree on each other. I'd be wary descending that way. It's lots of broken crags and gullies. There's no obvious features I can think of you are just heading for Lliwedd and the obvious bwlch. Be careful a young scout was killed taking a bad line there years ago.

That section is extremely unpleasant - and an accident black spot.  It's basically one big scree shoot.  I would definitely not recommend it.

I thought that might be the case... and I was aware of the poor scout you refer to.

I shall leave it to the record breakers and go the 0.2km around the corner!

Just to echo what’s been said, it would be no fun! The top section of the Watkin path has now been stepped so would probably be quicker anyway, as well as safer.

I've cut that corner several times, in all fact I've gone up that way too. The terrain is tricky. If you're not sure, don't.

I did it in April for the first time in descent. As everyone else says, it's horrible. I had poles and everything was loose underfoot, not easy to find the right way and I ended up traversing a lot. 

For the record, here's one of my recordings of it, rather more jagged than that record holder's attempt. 

Yes, it’s a steep scree slope. The kind of thing you only go near for a record or a race. Also expect it to be busy, and you don’t really want to be kicking rocks on punters heads.

I’ll be going mid week at the crack of dawn so hope it won’t be that busy. I went a few Fridays ago at 5am and we had the summit entirely to ourselves! I was very surprised to be fair, thought I’d live to be an old man and never have the summit of snowdon to myself!

This is one of the areas that is captured in astonishing detail on google earth. Keep zooming in, you can see individual rocks and scraps of paths. Particularly good on a vr headset. 

https://earth.google.com/web/search/snowdon/@53.06780814,-4.07401035,979.96...

Edit : hold down SHIFT and rotate with left mouse button to see the 3d nature of the terrain

I've done it once on the way up, in mist, after coming up the ridge between the lakes. Quite eerie, lots of scree, blind alleys & mini crags.  

And you can see the various routes people have taken by turning on the gpx layers on open streetmap :

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/53.06766/-4.07409&layers=CG