Trebanog day trip

by Matt Everett

The story begins in a pub, the night before the trip, where after a fantastic evening spent at the BANFF film festival in LLanelli most of the participants for todays day trip were drinking until last orders in the Bryn-y-mor. Truly the correct way to start any epic tale…

A few hours later, we congregated outside fulton house. Well all of us except Joe and Jonny who were late again. As weather had not yielded, we carried on with our plans to delve into the depth (well not quite depths) of the Valleys and into to magical realm of Trebanog.

Usual car-tom-foolery ensued including a pack of audi’s stalking peugeot drivers waiting for one to be seperated from the herd, before pouncing and undertaking that middle lane w*****r. Of course, we just watched.

We arrived in fair weather - no rain but no sunshine. The gang was so happy to be there - the rising damp-cladded buildings and shards of glass in the floor like thousands of mirrors everywhere you walked. The crag was in good condition and had been re-painted since my last visit.

We marched up and began kitting up when we met our first (of only two) local residents. They were trying to secretly dump a TV at the bottom of the cliff. In broad daylight on an exposed grassy area, being observed by 6 curious climbers - they failed. We can only speculate as to their reasons, but if anyone wants a free TV, there are now 2 at Trebanog.

As the day progressed an hour, we found ourselves in sunshine and no wind! Trebanog village lit up with exhuberance and the rock was warming up. From this point on I knew we would have a great day.

Onto climbing, and some great routes/achievements ticked today. Notably: I (mis)placed some faith in Henry’s micro-wires and climbed Kiwi’s Can’t Fly (E1 5c). Jonny also got an E grade with I Spy Direct (E1 5b) as did Joe who also climbed the route. Henry sent the airy Sunday Swing (VS 4c) as well as Micks Little Viper (HVS 5a), a great crack climb.

More importantly, two of the club’s newer leaders Jack and Adam got some more trad leads in the bag. I followed Jack up Last Arete (HS 4c) which sported a bold run out and technical arete climbing. Joe followed Adam up this after having a mini epic involving ropes. Doubling up 1 half rope (2x 25m lengths) is not enough for the fencepost belays. A breakdown in communication meant Joe had started climbing while Adam was adjusting the belay equalisation. Uh-oh! All was well when supermatt stepped in and called them both numptys.

We saw a horse, several loud cars and alot of sunshine! As the day grew on, and by that I mean it was about 3:00pm, Jonny, Henry and I decided to go and play on some of the sport routes there. On first impression, they looked pretty awful and blank however after a bit of playing and dogging on top-rope some holds came into view and the project was set!

Jonny and I battled for the first ascent of Banog’s Barmy Army (F7a). While I did all the groundwork; equipped the route, marked the holds, worked out the beta and had a ground-up attempt on top-rope, Jonny then jumped in and nearly flashed it! Git. Luckily for me he fell off on the final crux move. Not even his super fly Mammut harness-shorts could help him there. Tension rose as we each binned it on the last move. Jonny then found another crucial intermediate hold. Was this the end of the Dura-dura (or more aptly, duracell-duracell) at Trebanog? Nope! Denied again. Jonny descended and began to rest. I stepped up for my last go, using Jonny’s newly discovered hold and BOOM, landed it. The project was done, as was our day. We packed the remainder of our kit and headed home (via pub on the pond ofcourse).

A perfect end to the great day out - our cars weren’t on bricks.