We drove from Cumbria to North Wales as early as we could manage Saturday morning to get at least one good route in before the Climbers Club’s Welsh dinner. The sun was fully out and there was no wind – a glorious day – so we headed over to South Stack on Anglesey. After following the lighthouse steps down to the described hole in the wall, as for the approach to Mousetrap, had a look at the slippery slope and promptly decided to go back up the steps to the car park!
Laetitia negotiating the boulders at the bottom of Mousetrap Zawn
Plan B; we scrambled down to the abseil point, the arete between Mousetrap Zawn and Left Hand Red Wall. Our 65m caving rope was just long enough to get to the bottom of the zawn. At the bottom of the route we looked up at the amazing features of the rock, nothing like we’d ever seen before. The corrugated bands of quartz forming the chimneys look very imposing – a serious route.
Three pitches of challenging and only just adequately protected climbing covered some awesome ground – steep, and in the most audacious position.
Patterns are emerging on the site:-
the harder the climb, the fewer the comments?
Do you think so? 🙁
Hmm, interesting. Right then – if that really is the case we shall have to arrange a blitzkrieg of Classic Rock routes (especially with the new edition of the book just having been released)…
Looks a bit too steep for me. However, it does look like there are lots of holds or is that just the way the picture looks?
Yeah, this is the last pitch and there are quite a few positive holds, but it is quite steep! 🙂
The rock is weird though, almost like a soft sandstone in places and very soft and breakable – so even though some of the holds are good, you don’t want to pull that hard…