North Wales Trip Report

by Matt Everett

All great stories begin with peer pressure, and no peer pressure efforts were quite as spectacular as watching Scarlett crumble in JC’s at the hands of Adam, Tim and Linge. With our last minute members list amended, we all left for Dolawen at various times.

I left at 10:00am meaning we (Tim, Zara and I) got to North Wales in time for a cheeky boulder at RAC boulders. We shot up some slabs, fell off some aretes and struggled trying to mount the awkward Frew the Strong Man-tler (6c) - a slopy nose of…weirdness. Once we had enough, we went back to Dolawen and waited for the others. Everyone went to bed, and definitely didn’t make zip lines or perform table bouldering.

In the cold morning that followed, everyone woke up not to the sound of Adam banging a ladel in a saucepan (much to his disappointment). Deliberation ensued of what the plan of action was to be, which led to two teams being formed ‘Team faff’ and ‘Team no-faff’ aka Tim, Max, Florian, Adam, Emily and Hugo doing Ampitheatre buttress, and everyone else going up Tryfan.

Team faff faffed for a while before leaving the bunkhouse and were dropped off to begin their arduous walk-in. A long road, a hillside traverse and a very steep muddy gully descent later, the crew arrived at the bottom of Ampitheatre Buttress (VDiff) - the classic North Wales day out. Despite much whinging from Tim about the route being ‘a bit damp’ Team faff were disbanded and became known as The unstoppables as they powered through the massive alpine route with plenty of speed. Emily fell a bit but wasn’t injured and Adams group managed to mount the gendarmes at the top (and there was much rejoicing).

Meanwhile on the other side of the Ogwen valley, Team no-faff had idley cruised up Tryfan to Heather Terrace - the start of the climbs on the East face. We avoided the other teams already on their way and set off up. My group (Scarlett and Angel) went up most of Gashed Crag (VDiff), Linge and Laura went up Second Pinnacle Rib (Diff), Brodie (and someone else) went up First Pinnacle Rib (Diff) as did Betty and Matt Jaffa.

Due to poor navigation skills, my group missed the main feature of Gashed Crag and ended up to the side. After some Ad-libbing and long pitches, we ended up back on track ready for the final pitch - a wet, polished chimney. We decided to take our bags off and haul them up afterwards as they probably wouldn’t fit inside. Much swearing, heave-ho-ing and angry looks aimed at me took place before we finally topped out, all mostly un-scathed.

Betty’s adventure went seemingly without a hitch which for a first multi-pitch lead was very unusual. Brodie was hauled up First Pinnacle Rib (without a helmet!!!) which he described the exposure as ‘not really my kind of thing’. Linge and Laura also headed up without a hitch despite his antics at Three Cliffs Bay on the last trip. Although Laura and Betty took a different route to the rest of us to the crag which made us worry just a little bit.

Once at the top, Team no-faff lost their name by faffing. We left the top just before dusk and descended Tryfan in the dark. Most epics usually happen at this time, particularly if there is a lack of headtorches in the group. Fortunately, we were epic free!

We had taken much longer to descend than The Unstoppables who got fed up with waiting and all piled into Hugo’s car to head back to the bunkhouse. We all were re-united there and much drinking, drying and stripping off began. The meal was also cooked and shared with the group - Pasta, Bacon, Chicken and some weird green stuff too. It went down well with everyone - just like the jenga.


The Sunday saw sore muscles awake much slower and Adam managed to bang his pan to get the boys dorm out of bed. We packed up and left relatively early for another round of climbing.

The crew split again into a group of boulderers and a group of multi-pitchers. The boulderers hit up the cromlech boulders and had a chilled day of sending some classic lines such as The Ramp (font 6a) and Browns crack (font 5).

The multi-pitchers went to Carreg Wastad for some classic routes. 2 teams went up Wrinkle (VDiff) and 2 teams went up the mega classic Crackstone Rib (S). The latter was truly awesome, with hanging belays, exposed moves and burly traverses. Again, exposure hit some climbers with Hugo feeling quite exposed on the hanging belay. Scarlett enjoyed the burly final traverse so much, she decided to do it twice because she forgot to remove gear the first time. She then told us about the different types of heather and poked a mushroom at the top.

The final team to leave the crag were Max, Emily and Florian for a few reasons. The first being this was Max’s first multi-pitch route. The second being nobody told Max how to multi-pitch. A third was that Florian was determined to nab a cam that had been left behind. Some unsual extraction methods lead to his success and he gained a camalot. Nice work!

Petes eats and V12 then followed, and Hugo bought a size 5 nut to go with his belay plate. The cake was awesome, the tea was warm, but then we had to get back in the cars and drive home.

Who’s keen for round two next year?