North Wales Trip Report

by Tim Solway

This weekend’s trip started off no differently to others with everyone turning up on time except for Betty who was late but to everyone’s surprise only 10 minutes late. The journey up was seemingly uneventful except that all of the cars that left on the Friday managed to get lost at some point, some worse than others (Hugo). After Matt’s, Laura’s and Alex’s cars all arrived at about the same time the long wait started for Hugo’s car to arrive. Time went on with everyone just chatting and Norman stealing some rather old mayonnaise to eat with his pizza. Then finally Hugo arrived after his 7 hour journey with Brodie and Emily just after midnight. After some drunken teachings of how to multi pitch by Matt and some discussions on where to head out on Saturday, we all went to bed apart from Norman who was way too awake. Finally after about 10 minutes of everyone telling him to go to sleep he did and everyone drifted off to sleep. Then at around half 1 Florian and gestapo friends from Germany arrived and promptly woke up Osian by impaling him with his bag.

On Saturday we headed to Clogwyn y Tarw for some multi-pitch climbing. To Leah’s joy, she and Alex climbed a chimney and she even managed to get an arse jam in! Adam and Hugo did the first multi pitch (Slab Climb, D) with ease and enjoyment, then Tim led his first multi pitch (Slab Climb, D), starting off smoothly then with some rather dodgy anchors for his seconds. After a short break for lunch Florian led the same climb that Adam and Tim had done earlier but did it in a single pitch, thanks to Matt’s longer rope. Then just to the right Adam did a severe with Brodie and Henry. Hugo led a mod just to the left. With this being his first ever lead climb with his micro nuts he made a point of placing them even if they were terrible placements. The rain and wind started to batter us in the afternoon so we headed back to the bunkhouse to dry off. Adam and Betty prepared some delicious fajitas before the table bouldering started up, with a rather drunk Hugo showing the Germans what to do. Most of us joined in no matter how injured we were. After deciding to go to Matt’s favourite place on Sunday (slate) we went to bed and after Norman and Florian trying out their ‘wrestling moves’ on each other we got to sleep.

After an extra hour in bed on the Sunday we headed to the slate mines. We split up into two groups, group 1 being serious climbers and doing sport and the others having some fun doing snakes and ladders (and tunnels). After about an hour the weather turned bad with wind and rain so the serious lot had to stop climbing after just 4 routes, and decided to come looking for the rest. Tim, Hugo, Henry, Emily, Will and Henry were found at the top of the chain near the start of snakes and ladders who then finished the first section and decided to go back to the cars after Hugo nearly went into shock.

Meanwhile Adam, Brodie, Osian, Laura and Betty had powered up the chain (proving Matt wrong!!) and continued along the snakes and ladders route. A lot of fun was had climbing wobbly ladders in the snow. Brodie was named club pervert after walking in on Laura in the toilet before we abseiled back down to the finish on a rope that is now definitely broken!!

After getting back to the cars those who bailed went to v12 to get some gear for the Easter trip and finished the day sharing our adventures in the one and only Pete’s Eats