Archive for July, 2017

Roaches – wet and dry

Saturday, July 29th, 2017

For the July meet YAC returned to the Don Whillans Memorial Hut located at the foot of the Roaches. I was pretty keen to go and experience staying in this historic hut which is partly built into to the rock…..

The forecast for the weekend didn't look great and it rained heavily Friday night, even with the improves to the hut we had water running from the ceiling and had to deploy a few pots and pans.
We awoke Saturday morning to find the rain had stopped and the sun was out.

Carmen and Simon were out first as usual and head for the upper tier along with Annie who headed of for a walk followed by myself Russ and Danny. Many of the routes were still damp from the nights rain so we chose a route that looked dryish, Crack and Corner a 3 star HS. This turned out to be a really nice route and a popular one, after doing a few routes on the lower tier Jamie, Pete B, Peri and Dave D headed up have a go at the same route and show us where we should have gone on the second pitch – whoops.

Next up, Black and Tans, a top 50 severe then Saul’s Crack a Joe Brown route and another great climb. Jamie and Pete tackled Rotunda Buttress VS followed by Damascus Crack a route I would recommend, while Russ made an accent of Bachelors Buttress witch has a fairly bold start.
We finished off with an accent of The Sloth, a route first ascended by Willans himself, and one I’d heard lots about. Seen as the rock had dried throughout the day I had no excuses a fitting end to a great first day.

Surprisingly after Jamiie got a bit carried away with the chillies in the evening meal there seemed to be no lasting affects and Sunday was much the same rain during the night meant a damp start but the sun came out and dried things out.

Simon Carmen and Annie headed for Roaches Skyline followed by Jamie Dave and Pete while after a bit of wandering myself Peri Danny and Russ stayed on Upper Tier, this time climbing on the Simpkins Overhang and Wombat areas. Routes ticked on the Sunday included Wallaby Direct, Inverted Staircase, Contrary Mary, Runner Route and Light House.

My first trip to the Roaches and a really good weekend with some classics climbed and some to go back for ie Valkyrie.

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No naked ladies in sight

Tuesday, July 4th, 2017

Rylstone is a wonderful crag, set high above the village famous for its calendar girls, on the edge of Barden moors, the 30+ min walk from the car seem to put off many people, which is fine by me. Although it catches all the afternoon sun, it can be a tad damp in the morning. Mind you, when have we ever got to a crag early in the morning ?

Paul, Mike, Russ, Jamie and I made the trip and despite having the whole crag to ourselves, choose to climb a pair of routes next to each other and only just in the sun ! Of note was Paul's ascent, descent, re-ascent, decent, re-ascent, descent, re-ascent, descent, re-ascent and final ascent (I did lose count, and the will to live, so maybe underplaying it a bit here) of the crux on Sundowner HVS5a.

Throughout the day we did some great routes, repeating the easy classics, soloing some low grade slabs and always admiring the view. What a great place with great routes, especially in the lower grades, well worth a trip out.

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Miles from anywhere

Saturday, July 1st, 2017

I've fancied a trip to the Rugby MC hut at Cwm Eigiau ever since walking past it more years ago than I care to mention. And at last I had a chance, as the club had booked what is essentially a locked bothy for the weekend.

For once, the weather gods were on our side, and the recent hot sunny weather lasted through to the weekend. We even had a north-facing crag to climb on and avoid the worst of the heat!

The approach is by a 45 minute walk along a good track (which we still managed to take a wrong turning on). Most of us walked up, but Donal and Mike cycled. And Karl cycled up later on his new bike looking like he'd thoroughly enjoyed it and in no way swearing like a trooper. Luckily he was too tired to throw the bike back down the hill.

On Saturday, while Karl and Charles went walking on the Carneddau, most of us headed for Craig yr Ysfa. Carmen and I toyed briefly with trying Mur y Niwl (VS recently upgraded to HVS) but wimped out using the heat as an excuse. So we did a terrifying scramble/climb up a wet vegetated groove to reach the ledge at the foot of Pinnacle Wall instead – a fine Severe involving a long descending traverse along a quartz pavement followed by a long crack to finish.

Next we turned to the classic VDiff Amphitheatre Buttress. I'd done this many years ago and hadn't been impressed, but Carmen hadn't so we followed Dave and Donal up. Much better than I remembered – I must have been in a bad mood last time! And we bumped into Rich P who though not on the club trip was staying on the opposite side of the hill at Capel Curig.

Jamie Russ and Paul took advantage of the dry weather to make an ascent of Great Gully, a very (very) traditional VDiff. At least they thought they were taking advantage of the weather – instead they found the route wet and dirty, character building stuff.

On Sunday Karl headed home, Donal went biking, and Paul went for a run, while the rest of us returned to Craig yr Ysfa. Jamie and Dave went up Amphitheatre Buttress, Dave must have enjoyed it the day before!

Carmen and I opted for Nether Climb – a 1-star Severe in the old guidebook, but without any logbook ticks on UKC. As this suggests, the route was a bit on the dirty side!

Pitch 1 was broken and vegetated. Pitch 2 was better, though bold and tricky given the lichen, closer to VS 4b. Pitch 3 I've no idea about, as I went entirely the wrong way! The way I went was hard (VS 4b ish) and led nowhere, so I took a rope-drag-tastic line up some broken grooves and back left to regain the arete. As luck would have it, this brought us almost exactly to the top of the correct pitch. So far so bad, but pitch 4 was superb, almost worth the trauma of getting there! And the final pitch was also pretty good.

All that remained now was to get back down, which was a minor epic in its own right, descending a steep and extremely exposed rake, well worth roping up for.

That was quite enough for both of us so we returned to the hut, met the others, and headed off.

A really good weekend, and a good though basic hut in a fantastic location. We'll undoubtedly go back, though it might be a bit grim in bad weather.

More photos here

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