North Wales Climbing

A plan thought up a few weeks ago was carried out on saturday in the glorious conditions we have here.  A link up of routes on the major crags in the park.  Although we didn’t finish as many as we wanted to we had a great time on Amphitheatre buttress, Pulpit route, Grooved Arete, Direct route, Charity, Groove above, Grey slab, Rib and slab and Nea.  A challenge left to complete to carry on for the rest of the crags…

Brilliant day off with Michele today climbing at Holyhead mountain. A rare occasion where we were both free as grandparents had kindly agreed to look after Ella for the day. We climbed 4 routes up to E2, not bad considering Michele has not really climbed at all for 2 years since being pregnant with Ella.

I have had a great week with Liam, Chris, Keith, Verity and Susan on a mountaineering skills course.  Over the course of the week we have visited areas such as Cnict, the eastern Glyderau, a 2 day expedition in the Carneddau, all finished off with an ascent of the North ridge of Tryfan.  The group did a fantastic job picking up and honing various new skills including lots of navigation.  

I have spent the last two days with Andy and Claire on an Advanced scrambling course.  I have worked with Andy on a scrambling course before so had a good idea of his ability and Claire was up for a challenge. So for day 1 we opted to climb in the sun on the brilliant Grooved Arete on the East face of Tryfan.  Not exactly a scramble but offered us a good challenge with 250m of climbing up to the summit of the mountain.  On the way down we looked at some rope work techniques to finish off a fantastic day.  Today we went to Little Tryfan in the morning and Andy and Claire swung leads up the left hand arete line which is a great grade 3/moderate rock climb.  Then we nipped around to Milestone Buttress and they led up Milestone Approach route which is another grade 3 scramble weaving a devious line through steep rock climbing terrain.  We finished off the course looking at crevasse rescue techniques in preparation for their planned Alpine trip later this year.

Been a busy few weeks again.  Working with fast track students all last week with a combination of rock climbing, ice climbing and SPA training all of with was great fun with a really good group of people.  This week I have spent 2 days working with a couple on a lead climbing course where we managed to dodge the rain and snow at Holyhead mountain and Tremadog with them leading a number of single and multipitched routes in great style.  Today I have been out with a group of international competition winners for Gore.  They are completing the 14 peak challenge over the week and today we completed Pen Yr Ole Wen, Carnedd Dafydd, Carnedd Llewelyn and Yr Elen.  The weather at the moment is full on winter with above knee deep snow on the tops so all the more impressive that they are easily on target to complete all the peaks by Friday, I wish them luck.  I have 2 days off now to hopefully enjoy some climbing or maybe skiing!

I have spent this weekend with Simon on an intro winter climbing course.  Simon has done a fair amount of rock climbing but was keen to learn a bit more about winter climbing in order to venture out in winter in the further.  Having been away for a week and then working in the cloud last week I was unsure exactly how much snow was still around but hoped there would still be some lines to climb.  On saturday we romped up to Cwm Cneifion and were rewarded with some snow gullies to look at snow belays.  After some practice building belays using buried axes and bucket seats we set off up a grade I gully to the top.  Once there we looked at a series of snow bollards to abseil back down the climb.  Today we have been up in Cwm Glas.  The weather was much colder, and windier!!!  We climbed Parsley Fern gully on perfect solid neve swinging leads all the way to the top.  We even managed to find some lovely grade II ice to start the climb.  The winds on the top were ferocious, much stronger than the 40mph forecast.  We gambled that they would drop off as we descended so went to have a look at dropping down Y Gribin, a great grade I scramble.  The gamble mostly paid off, although care was still required as the winds were by no means light.  A great couple of days with the conditions being much, much better than we had anticipated.