Down and up

Come August, it was about time for another trip to Snowdonia. The weekend in the middle of the month saw us gathered at the campsite above Llanberis on a Thursday evening (or 3am on Friday morning if you're Jack and Will!)

On Friday we took on Dolmen Ridge on the face of Glyder Fach. A vague tramp around the base of the cliffs led to a vague gully, above which a vague slab led to another vague gully. It started to rain quite vaguely. The route ahead seemed very... not clearly defined.

We started to get that familiar wet-loose-gully feeling, the one bordering on misery. The decision to leave wasn't questioned. We looped the rope over a convenient rock and began our orderly abseil retreat back down the gully.

It wasn't until Will had pulled the rope through that he remembered the cache of gear he had left lying up by the abseil rock. Up I went, retracing our footsteps and our abseil, only for the rope to come stuck the second time round. Clearly not our day...


On Saturday we had a much needed day at Tremadog. Climbing as a rope of three on multi-pitch trad is not efficient and it wasn't a day for breaking new ground. We first repeated Boo Boo. Then as a special treat I was allowed to lead all four pitches of Christmas Curry.

There was a lucky escape on the first pitch when, squeezing through a tight corner, I felt something dettatch from my harness. I watched in horror as my camera bounced away down the rockface. I shouted to Will who, without missing a beat, grabbed it out of the air.

The climb took forever. A major tangle with the ropes and an extra delay to allow a faster pair through probably wasted about half an hour. Nonetheless I had great fun. On the final pitch I felt an incredible sense of elation and would have happily deroped if it hadn't left Will and Jack in the shit. I don't know why I felt so strongly - it was after all our third trip up this route, albeit the first time was on an instructor's leash and the second time I went off route and screwed up badly. So it wasn't a major milestone. The fabulously exposed topout in the teeth of a howling gale certainly gave it an epic feel!