Snowdonia: 21st – 23rd

Disclaimer: Peate may have edited some of Ellie and Charlie's sections.

Saturday 22/11/14

Selfie game on point

Despite low committee numbers and threats of bad weather, the bus was psyched to get to climb on the Slate and in the Pass as it chased after Charlie and James in their cars. Dire weather and a somewhat malfunctioning bus resulted in some nerve wracking moments en route, but nothing a smooth talking Jim couldn't fix. On arrival at the NLMC hut in Capel Curig, we unpacked our bags in the cramped sleeping compartments to settle down for a beer and a perusal through the guide books; until someone exclaimed that it was late-o’clock at which point we slowly drifted off in the direction of bed.

As expected, we woke up to dark ominous cloud (once the sun had come up). Praising the impermeable, and subsequently quick drying, nature of slate we kept our hopes held high for a good day. Upon arrival Jim, Jake and SamNE got on some hard climbing on the lower tier, whilst the rest of went up to the Sidings to warm up on some gentle routes. These routes were very slimy in places, but Remy appeared unphased by the lack of friction. Ali got his climbing head back on so as to put up a rope for Aiden to get his feet wet on some slate. It later transpired that Remy had taken a ground fall from the second bolt, but landed directly onto his feet and was unharmed. Unfortunately the weather rolled in at this point and we debated the potential for more climbing. The decision was made that Jim and Ellie would lead a party of brave/naïve climbers on the Snakes & Ladders route around the Quarry, whilst James and I would take the other half of the climbers for a stroll in the pass.

Cyrn Lacs Hiking Party:

James and I joked that as long as we don’t admit to it, the others wouldn't realise that we didn't know where we were. We set off at a quick pace following the ‘faint path’, which in reality involved us slogging straight up the hill. Once the hill had levelled off we had a chilled lunch break under the shadow of Cyrn Las, and debated whether the Snakes & Ladders crew were still alive.. Keen to show off his new found ability to complete ‘hard winter ascents’, James Thyng lead us off up the ridge to the right of Cyrn Las for a mild scramble. However after a brief chat with a hardy mountain couple, we decided to descend the way we came so as to avoid being caught out in the dark (to get a cuppa from Pete's Eats) 

Ellie/Charlie’s description of Snakes & Ladders:

UKC describes this route as ‘not a conventional climbing experience’ and that it certainly is! It takes you through the enigmatic world of the quarries with amazing names such as ‘Hades’ and ‘Mordor’, up rusty ladders and through dark dripping tunnels. While the route took us through the depths of the Dinorwic quarry and its history, Jim gave us a guided tour of the climbing history and the many awesome and hard routes.

So Jim lead us off though the tunnel above Dali’s hole, then skirting around the first of the deep pits ‘Hades’, we found ourselves in ‘California’. There I lead up a giant rusting chain to the next tunnel, but just then the rain set in good and proper resulting in only Josh and Jake managing to second it. The others skipped this section and we three abseiled down to meet them back above Dali’s hole.

The route then took us through a secret tunnel – ‘doesn’t count if you use a head-torch’ - where you can see the old train tracks. We then scrambled around ‘Australia’ and up a very sketchy pile of loose slate scree… so much loose!... to a series of rusty ladders. Some of these looked less suspect than others, but it was simply best not to consider what was keeping them from falling down! Each ladder seemed to get worse than the last, with some missing several rungs, some attached at the top even less than others and some that required a big step across to the next ladder in mid-air!

All happy to be alive we emerged at the top of the quarries to explore the old miners huts where tattered clothes hang on the wall and boots still remain abandoned from when the miners left. Having ascended all the ladders, the snakes were still to come in the form of abseils deeper and deeper into the slate pits. Down ‘The Heaven Walls, into the depths of ‘The Lost World’ and ‘Mordor’ we found some truly forgotten and otherworldly places. Cave entrances far up the rock face, incredible rock colours, hidden miner’s huts, bits of hanging metal, silence and strange echoes, we really experienced the awesomeness of the slate quarries. Our adventure ended in a contemplation of ‘The Bridge of Doom’; a recently (and thankfully) collapsed train line suspended in mid-air.

Back to Peate

That night one of out French expats Marie thought she would share her culture with us by cooking up the largest quantity of crepes I've ever witnessed. ULMC proved that they can be a classy bunch by garnishing their crepes with cream and smoked salmon. We settled down for the evening to play a game lead by our host Marie. Having not been on  a meet yet this term, an excitable James Thyng rudely quizzed said host as to "when does this game get fun?".

Sunday 23/11/14

Josh’s Slate Vignette

Having been rained off the previous day, Charlie and I were still psyched for slate, so we brought (dragged?) Maya, Aidan, Connor, Anthony and James along and got on it. We headed to the sidings to get warmed up on some of the shorter routes in the quarry, with everyone quickly dispatching the lower grades! Highlights of the morning included Charlie leading Choo Choo (5c) and Maya and I both ticking Sodor (6a), definitely an underrated route! Following an early lunch (at least for some of us, Connor wisely abandoned his tinned goop) psyche levels were high. Charlie and I headed down to Looning the Tube (HVS 5a), leaving Aidan in Maya's capable hands for his first lead whilst Connor continued his ticking spree with Anthony following.

 

Charlie on Clash of the Titans

Aiden on Sideline

Connor's goop....

Maya on Sodor

Loonin'

After an excellent outing on Looning the Tube (that chain...) with some great abseil photography from James, Charlie and I checked back in with the Sidings gang to find that Aidan, having crushed his first lead (Gordon, 4a), was already eyeing up a second whilst Connor and Maya were also scoping out some hard routes for the afternoon. Charlie and I left them to it, this time to do Clash of the Titans (6a), an atmospheric  40m route at the top of the quarry, with James making the most of the golden hour with another abseil photo session. We returned to discover hard sending all round, with Aidan having cruised his second lead as well (Sideline 4c, top effort!)whilst Maya ticked the Railway Children (6a) and Connor led Hogwarts Express (5c) with Anthony seconding in good style (get on a lead already!). After a swift pack up we dashed back to the cars in the fading light to meet the multipitchers in the pass, with psyche levels high for KFC on the way home.

                

Ellie’s Clogwyn y Grochan (Llanberis Pass) Vignette

Plodding up the scree to the Grochan, we kept glancing apprehensively upward at the rather wet looking crag. On closer inspection a few routes proved to be dry, although James seeked out one that wasn’t. While Jim and Jake dispatched Spectre HVS 5a (Jake’s first proper trad lead), and Sam, Joel and I got going on Phantom Rib VS 4b, James valiantly, if exceedingly slowly, scaled a very soggy first pitch of Nea VS 4b. He managed to have only just completed the first pitch as our team topped out at the second belay and Jim and Jake finished their entire route! However James it seemed was not having the best of luck, on top of the wetness (I heard things about water running down rock), he managed to go the wrong way, and when he eventually re-routed himself he arrived at the most microscopic of belay ledges. However he made do, setting up a cramped “homoerotic” (Peate, J. 2014) hanging belay. The next half an hour it got increasingly more cramped as Remy and then Ali joined him. Things got fairly intimate over there, while we sat on our spacious ledge laughing at them; Jim then abseiled down to join in the fun. ‘This is fucking awful’ Ali stated, unamused by the whole wet, cold, lengthy, and overcrowded affair. Things got a little better after that. Then they got a little worse when James dropped a Cam from the top pitch. They finally managed a successful top out of the third pitch at 3pm, a lengthy 5 hours after starting!

In the meantime Jake had lead Brant Direct HVS 5a with ease, and Jim Kaisergebirge Wall HVS 5b. Sam psyched me up to also lead Brant Direct, an awesome slightly overhanging groove which necessitated some funky shapes. I was psyched, and then speedily impressed as Joel rapidly seconded it clean with no apparent difficulty at all!

               

  Peate’s Carreg Wasted Vignette

Katie, Marie and Iteamed up to enjoy a day in the pass. We messed around racking up and spooling out the ropes in the saturated soil at the awkward belay point of Crackstone Rib. A nervous Katie eventually got on it, avoiding the first wet holds, whilst I tried to build moral in a cold, tired Marie. Katie got stuck into the traverse making swift progress as I unhelpfully pointed out gear placements, progress briefly slowed down as she calmly said “I’d really like some more gear”. However she pushed on and easily made the swing out onto the airy arête. Progress briefly slowed as Katie worked out the moves and the gear placement, again informing us that she was (understandably) ‘scared’. Despite this she focussed and made it to the ‘belay ledge’. Once I arrived at the ‘belay ledge’ it was obvious that this was a James Thyng style belay ledge as myself, Katie and Marie got somewhat cosy.

 I was next to lead off, which brought us to the actual belay ledge (‘ledge’ almost doesn’t indicate the size of it) and proceeded to tease Katie for not setting up at this point. The next pitch makes a somewhat intimidating traverse under a steep wall on jugs filled with water. I finished up the route and proceeded to bring Katie and Marie up, who were not impressed by the swing potential created by this traverse. On attempting to retrieve another of my awkwardly placed nuts, Marie dropped/ threw my nut key onto the belay ledge 15 metres below. A highly apologetic Marie topped out, whilst Katie and I swapped over so I could be lowered off to retrieve my belongings. All in all a good day out.

Roaches Meet 7th - 9th November

 This blog is a little different, instead of a seamless flow of Captain eloquence, in Jack’s absence the remaining committee members, myself, Amy, Emily, Charlie and Callum have decided to piece the trip together from our various points of view. So we’ll begin with Emily and Amy recounting the trails and hilarity of Friday night:

Emily: (Note: Kerry is a penis). After pre drinks in the very heavy mini bus, heavier drinking proceeded in the hut. A game of ‘never have I ever’ proceeded and as usual it was pretty boring and no one had weird or disgusting secrets to share…

Amy: We started off the weekend with a bit of a shock; having expected to find our normal 15 seater minibus we turned up at Uni to find that, to our horror, we only had a 12 seater… how on earth were we going to fit everything in?! After a quick couple of phone calls and a bit of Tetris style planned packing we managed to fit everything in, albeit quite snuggly, and were soon on our way!

On arrival it was a nice short walk up the hill to the hut and after a bit of settling in we were ready to have a great night (forecast was looking a bit shit for Saturday). Unfortunately the well-known boulder problem was no longer an option as the warden had very nicely decided to put some heating lamps into the kitchen.

Food was eaten and the shenanigans of the evening began! We started off with Remy’s rendition of Ride the Bus, ending with amazement when Conner managed it on only his 4^th try! Normally this is impossible and results in copious beverage consumption, a fact that Jake took upon himself to prove. Next came ring of fire, the usual ensued with a lot of drinking, swapping of clothes, rhymes, categories. Far too much was found out about each other during ‘never have I ever’, particularly some delightful facts about Emily Mobley and also Charlie and Jack. The game culminated in my naked hut run, to what appeared to be the great surprise of our newer members who maybe didn’t realise I was going to actually get naked!

The night concluded with extravagant dancing and sing-alongs to some amazing Frozen songs. We headed to bed expecting to have a day of hard hangover recovery at Awesome Walls.

The Don Whillans Memorial Hut, our home for the weekend looking atmospheric in the morning mist.

Ellie: Well of course she was going to get naked…this is Amy we’re talking about! I only want to add that Connor, Remy and Jake managed the impressive feat of drinking a 2 litre bottle of tramp cider each plus a bottle of whisky between them, with a little help from Bethan. Much drunkenness. Much dancing. Not so much hangover it seemed!

Emily also forgot to mention that she blew it at the petrol station, putting in £50 and 1 penny. One job Emily!

I also take great pride in my 100% successful navigation of the bus to the hut. We won’t discuss the subsequent navigational attempts of the trip, suffice to say that any detours taken are not noteworthy in size.

 So Saturday dawned alluringly un-damp…or wet, so we dragged our varying degrees of hung-over selves outside at 8am to do some bouldering on the lower tier. Emily, Jake and I sent Three Pocket Slab V3, which I was pretty psyched about. Everyone had a go at the various boulder problems, apart from Chunder Charlie who sat dejectedly on a stone threatening to live up to her infamous name.

Charlie: At 7am Callum, Ellie and I headed outside to check if any rock was dry so we could squeeze a couple of hours’ bouldering in before the rain set in.  Much to my dismay I was far too hung over to even manage one boulder problem, but before 10am the rain had already started. Everyone piled back inside the hut, but a bored Ellie decided a rainy walk along the crag could improve everyone’s psyche for Sunday. 

After walking for a while everyone was completely sodden, so we headed back to the hut and off to Awesome Walls in Stoke.  Everyone got their indoor boulder on and some (plastic) routes were sent. Saturday night was far less eventful than the previous one, and Jack and I were in bed by half 9!

Ellie: I can only add a few points of interest to this.

Namely Jack is a moron: have you ever wondered why you don’t leave pasta in water after it’s been cooked? Probably not, because it is blatantly obvious why this is a bad idea. Apparently not to Jack Knight, who returned from his walk to enjoy a humongous saucepan of turgid, waterlogged pasta which not even a whole pot of pesto AND an entire chorizo could mask the taste of.

nomnomnom…! 

Secondly the warden is a prick: this gentleman made a surprise appearance to do some maintenance while we were eating lunch, fair enough, he seemed like a nice enough guy.…That was until he took the untoward action of opening Charlie’s crisps and feeding his (admittedly rather cute) dog. Charlie impressed levels = low. I’m sorry? Did we miss him asking? No, apparently this was his standard polite behaviour as he proceeded to attempt the same with Ali’s pork pie: “I know who would like that” nodding towards his (still rather cute) dog. “yep, me actually!” said Ali taking a stand against his obnoxiousness. Then he left and returned(!) to try and abscond with Charlie’s scones. Charlie impressed levels = at rock bottom. So we left in disgust to attempt to regain our faith in humanity at Awesome walls, which were as Emily put it “Awesome! (walls)” There we were welcomed with hugs by none other than Sam Eady who lives near by (Jealous!). We tired ourselves out cranking hard and had an early night.

Emily on Pine Slab V2

So I’ll let Emily continue with Sunday: After another shit nights sleep, we got back to bouldering. Amy, Steve, Ally, Ellie and I got on some slabby boulder problems at pine tree slab and Steve fell off Pine Slab, V2 into a very muddy puddle much to our hilarity.

 

Ellie’s turn on Pine Slab

We all sent it in the end, and after a while we moved up to Upper Tier and then to The Cellar and Attic Boulders. Some people left to do some trad, but Ally, Steve, Connor and I remained bouldering, and after trudging though the mud there was love at first sight as Steve found the boulder problem Scrack f3+ (no surprise it was a surly crack problem). It was Connors turn and he’d decided to not use any jamming at all until the top section where he managed to jam his body into the off width crack, and get a little/very stuck. Steve ran up to help and in the meantime Connor was thrusting his way out, making some very questionable noises, providing Ally and I a lot of entertainment at the bottom while spotting. Hopefully we didn't put you off too much from crack climbing Connor..? We ended the day down at the Bog Boulders which were surprisingly boggy so ended up doing very little there.

 

Ali on Pine Crack V0

Ellie: Callum’s attempt to climb Valkyrie on Saturday had been tragically thwarted as the rain came down the precise moment we were about to start the first pitch. But he was pretty keen to get back on the rock as this meet was the first time he could climb without danger of his eye falling out!

Callum: After a morning of torrential rainfall and some hard sending on plastic the afternoon before, everyone woke on Sunday pretty keen to climb some real rock. Unfortunately everything seemed to be sopping from the day before and so the search began for climbable boulders.  With Ellie and Emily both sending a 6a boulder the day before, Jack and Callum decided to give it another try before consenting that this was not the boulder for them. Jake was quick to find a lovely 7a undercut-to-sloper-3m-dyno problem round the corner which resulted in a game of who can slap the chalk the highest. 

Jake attempting the seemingly impossible dyno.

On the corner of this boulder was a lovely f4 problem which everyone gave a good try, particularly enjoyable was Charlie’s short person beta of the route once she’d stopped complaining about the dampness of a starting foothold.

As people found their feet and began searching for their own boulders, Jack and I spotted a cave boulder problem directly beneath Valkyrie. It had chalk on it and was dry, so seemed like a great idea – welcome, to the wad cave! Figuring out the moves in a rather backwards fashion, all but one were connected in the roof part of the route. Upon later UKC inspection this turned out to be the aptly named ‘The Gutter” – a mighty V8 7a+!

 

Joel on Flake Crack V0

  

Ellie: While Callum and Jack were being ‘real boulderers’ in their wad cave: i.e. spending <90% of them time trying hard but not actually sending the problem, the rest of the group headed to the upper tier. Everyone was remarkably psyched and problems were being knocked down left, right and centre. The holes in the boulders made for some very achievable bouldering, even more so for the impossibly lanky: “Paddy, it says ‘do not jump’ to the hole”, “yeah I’m not jumping… oh look and there’s the top”.

 

Pyjama bouldering Paddy

Extra incentive was added to Staircase, a V1 with a sit-start and sketchy wet top out, when a fellow boulderer on a day out with his kids, put a chocolate coin at the top of the boulder. Joel speedily figured out that an unlikely heel hook, a gurn and a hope-for-the-best would get him to the top. Others and I quickly followed suit… yay beta monkies!

 

That’s the move. Now rock and gurn!

Connor, looking the tboulderer type in his awesome yellow bouldering trousers, chilling on a rock. He later enjoyed a good nap on the pad in true chill boulderer style!

Callum: In the afternoon the sun came out to play and some of the new-comers were able to get on their first trad leads! Callum and Jack took Jake and Remy, respectively, in which they found out about a particular climb that was cursed. While Callum climbed his first lead in several months (an easy crack into an awful gearless off-width which I did in awful style) Jack was abseiling down a Vdiff next to him to retrieve a hex. An inventive use of two nut tools was the key to this retrieval. Afterwards the two groups switched routes upon which Jake lead his first ever trad route and dropped his phone from the top of the route. Callum heroically abbed down to retrieve it, finding it amazingly face down on a grassy ledge half way down the route, completely unscathed! While this was going on Remy was finishing his second lead of Prow Corner Twin Cracks, VDiff,  in which he built a (rather unnecessary) hanging belay  that Josh Taujanskas would definitely have something to say about (Tradfest, 2014).

 

 [insert schlp noise here]

Ellie: Marie and I meanwhile went to do Right Hand Route HS to warm up on, the laybacking start proved to be a polished mess but it was accomplished and the main thing was I got to place 4 of my shiny new Cams! Much happiness. Then Marie did her second trad lead, a HVD called Prow Corner Twin Cracks, which she dispatched in style. Bethan also lead this route, a choice for getting back into leading after not having climbed in a while.

Here she taking a nap in a conveniently shaped boulder.

Charlie: Whilst this was all happening, Jake managed to drop his phone out of his pocket which landed halfway down a route in a crack!  Callum abseiled down for it and miraculously it wasn’t even damaged!  At this point Marie had turned up, and she did her second lead and made it look incredibly easy! Joel also got on his first trad lead, Prow Cracks VDiff, and didn’t seem to have any problems either.

With it getting dark, everyone headed back to the hut to get it emptied and into the minibus.  Despite the damp rock, everyone was in high spirits as we headed back to Leicester via a trip to KFC, which I’m sure Bethan, newly vegan, was very happy about ;)

 

Paddy, Remy, Jake, Ellie and Emily: a successful ascent of Big Boulder

Ellie: So this patchwork of up of a weekend gave everyone a little taste of everything: ULMC fun and dreadfulness, outdoor and indoor bouldering, the joys of a soggy walk in the Peak, and of course some good old trad climbing. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, were quick to help the diminished committee out, and altogether both competence and psyche levels were high considering the rain.

 I guess this patchwork of a blog reflects the weekend, with a bit from all of committee who were there, we hope you’ve enjoyed reading it!

Thanks to Charlie and Joel for the pictures!