The Christmas meet. This post is late however, I apologise.
2 days before the massive ASDA order had arrived at my house. As such the gear van was coming to my house. The driver (James) however did not know the way to my house so I left to be at uni to help pack the van and to help it get to my house. Having got almost to the house however we had to head back to uni to pick up the harness bag that had not arrived before we left. We got to my house maybe 10 minutes later than planned, but then of course had to pack the bus with all the gear and food. Despite forgetting the fridge goods i.e. butter quorn and cream et.al we (myself, Amelia and James) were packed and leaving by 7. At this time the other buses were leaving Fosse Park. We got to Fosse Park, worked our way round the horrible road system there and filled up. Then we aimed to catch up the other buses by the M54 stop we had for Tesco’s. Several wrong turns later we were on the right road and looking good. The Tesco stop was rather fast, we got there and were told we had 5 minutes. A frantic search round the alcohol aisles and we were done. Starting the 3 bus convoy we left and I witnessed a bus war pass. This was the only one I saw but I gather there were others and I approve of the tradition being continued. The long dark drive in Wales followed with some low cloud that I mistook for snow proving interesting viewing.
We all got to the hut with Wiil, Lianne, Vicky and Henderbox already there. I managed the unloading of the bus then went in. The zip line was put up pretty quickly and ran for a few hours with many people going down the short line from the building to a tree. I am still surprised no one broke anything or suffered major injuries when using it but I guess it was rigged and run well :). Further drinking followed before people began to call it a night and go to bed.
The planned 8 o'clock wake-up failed due to alarms not working but we were ready only an hour or so late and heading for the days destination of Holyhead mountain. Luckily the weather was surprisingly good, barring a devilish wind, the skies were relatively clear, the sun showed up sometimes and there was no precipitation. The lack of leaders led to 4 top ropes being set up at the top of a ramp. The wind up top was ferocious but not long after Sergeant, Frosty, Howett, Wiil, Wicks and myself (may have forgotten other people, I do apologise) had got to the top we had created 4 massively extended top ropes that still jammed. Unfortunately nothing could be done about that so Sergeant, Wicks, Tron, John and James left for other routes. Cole and Henderbox started on a HS route while myself and Wiil scouted a Diff that we were about to do when Cons topped out on his route. Sorting that out took a bit but once the rope was back at the ground Wiil started up the Sump; the original route that Cole was doing the HS variant for. A quick jaunt up a relatively unprotected slab led to the belay where I took a small rack for the second pitch which turned out to be a few moves long. Still it counts as a lead. A short lunch break and Wiil Frosty and Myself began soloing up the Sump. Wiil did the entire route no problem, but frosty seemed to have a bit of trouble with the second pitch. He was pretty hungover but still. 3 points of aid led to Frosty finishing in a bit of a state. Using frosty's beta I did the second pitch easier than when I was on lead and we all went to the ground :). A fair amount of mincing occurred while all the freshers seemed to be going on walks around the area. After a while I decided to attempt the HS I had been looking at for a bit. The starting runout went well and I was at the arête trying to place gear before it really hit me what the fall would be like. A few moves up and there were a few more gear placements I tried to use badly. One scary move later I was topping out and bringing Wiil up. The top ropes were taken apart and after a fair amount of time wasting we went to the bus and Llanberis. A nice look in the gear shops and we were returning to the hut for the Christmas dinner. The meal was nice and cooked well :) thanks to the rest of the committee for cooking it and lianne for joining them and letting me climb.
After the meal and ‘surprise’ everyone sorted out the hut and began to socialise. This continued in various ways until the morning. I didn’t join in until around 10/11 ish after a nice talk with Amy :). This was when I unveiled my costume. A Top Girl skimpy elf outfit :P. Apparently I have nice legs. It was a poor effort from Amelia however who had the same costume but refused to wear the stockings, and had both trousers and a top on underneath it. The banter that followed was impressive and I started enjoying the night a lot more. Several drinking games and a bit of roof bouldering, sorry to the people watching me do that, and it was early morning and I was going to bed.
Sunday dawned a lot later than planned I think. I was woken up and made to get out of bed at around 10/11. After getting everyone to pack up the plan was changed to tidy the hut afterwards and just get people doing stuff while we had the light. 2 groups left, one for the Beacon climbing wall, and one for the Llanberis slate quarry Dinorwic (Dinorwig slate quarry). I went on the slate walk so cannot comment on the climbing wall trip. The quarries were epic, despite the trespassing necessary. Pools of water were ridiculously clear and long drops redefined long. We visited several sections of Dinorwig and I scouted a few routes to try another time. The weather was too wet for the planned bouldering after the walk so we went back to the hut and tidied everything up. Unfortunately there is not much more to say about the trip bar the KFC/McDonalds we stopped at on the way back. Several people wanted to go to KFC, which apparently had no chips and would not replace them with anything. McDonalds just had a staffing issue; there were too few of them and they were not efficient enough.
Well I think that’s pretty much everything that you might want to read about, so I’ll stop there. Hopefully I will have more posts over the holidays but if not I will see you all again after the next meet, sometime in late Jan/early Feb.
