Cnicht

Cnicht is a mountain in Snowdonia which forms part of the Moelwynion mountain range.

Features

Its appearance when viewed from the south-west, i.e., from the direction of Porthmadog, has earned it the sobriquet the "Matterhorn of Wales", albeit being 3,787 metres lower. In reality, Cnicht is a long ridge and, at 691 m, is the fifth-highest peak in the Moelwynion mountain range. It can be easily ascended from Croesor, the village at its foot, or, with more difficulty, from Nant Gwynant to the northwest.
Although regarded by some as a mountain in its own right, Cnicht does not have the required 150m of topographic prominence to be classed as a Marilyn.

Toponymy

The mountain's name is thought to derive from the English surname Knight, the name of a family who were formerly merchants in Caernarfon. When borrowed into Welsh, the consonants represented by and were still pronounced in English, and these are retained in the Welsh name Cnicht as and .

In fiction

It appears as the "Saeth" in Patrick O'Brian's 1952 novel Three Bear Witness, which is set in a fictionalised version of Cwm Croesor. O'Brian and his wife lived in the valley between 1946 and 1949.