• Laetitia shows the extra effort required smearing on the thin slab with a heavy pack

  • 10m of un-protected climbing off the belay on the 2nd pitch!

  • Thirty-Nine Steps; it's a lot steeper than the picture makes it look, and several tufts of grass and heather and mint plants have been removed

Ogwen & Tremadog

Work on the new Ogwen and Tremadog guidebooks continues at a pace… This weekend saw Don Sargeant doing a photo shoot in Ogwen for new action pictures, and the Tremadog team met at Eric’s cafe to check on script writing progress.

We got up too late (of course) to get involved in the Ogwen photo shoot, but we managed a long-ish day climbing on the Idwal Slabs, the Continuation Walls, and the Grey Arete. Finishing high on Glyder Fawr, on Y Gribin. Climbing three long routes stacked on top of each other with a pack made for an almost alpine style day. Even the weather was like summer in the Alps; hot and sunny!

10m of un-protected climbing off the belay on the 2nd pitch!
10m of un-protected climbing off the belay on the 2nd pitch!
Laetitia shows the extra effort required smearing on the thin slab with a heavy pack
Laetitia shows the extra effort required smearing on the thin slab with a heavy pack

Saturday evening we met up with Dave and Fiona for a BBQ at their camp site in Capel Curig.

Sunday morning the Tremadog team met at Eric’s cafe to check progress, and after that we dispersed to climb and check routes in various locations. Steve and I went to Craig y Llyn. What a lichenous and mossy place! :angry: This crag needs way more people to climb it and clean the routes up; they are probably all quite nice when clean. Preferring to stay alive (and not spend all day removing the dirt) we climbed Thirty-Nine Steps, supposedly E1 5a, more like 6a and certainly not E1…

Thirty-Nine Steps; it's a lot steeper than the picture makes it look, and several tufts of grass and heather and mint plants have been removed
Thirty-Nine Steps; it's a lot steeper than the picture makes it look, and several tufts of grass and heather and mint plants have been removed

4 thoughts on “Ogwen & Tremadog”

  1. Hey Pete, so you and Tish are just finding out about the Ogwen classic link-ups, some as run out as anything, that me and Paul knew about years ago :geek: When I started climbing, one started in Ogwen and only when you had done the classic test pieces could you move to the Pass.

    So lets see some massive re-grading, Tennis Shoe (already upgraded 20 years ago needs further upgrade :star: As do some on Continuation Wall, even Lazarus maybe ❓

    There’s nothing unusual about unprotected runouts at Ogwen, even with modern gear 😐

  2. We climbed on Holly Tree Wall – Javelin Buttress (4c). Seemed a bit hard, but it’s hard to tell with the heavy packs.
    Also, Grey ArΓƒΒͺte is now 4c, 4c, 5a. Again, seems under-graded, especially the second pitch (which is usually linked to pitch 3).
    But no polish there, and the rock is super sticky. Lovely, lovely slabs. Good practice for Lofoten. :love:

  3. Well, as a rule of thumb, in those days, we used to say that once you could climb VDiff in Ogwen, you could climb VS at Tremadog, so great was the disparity, we thought πŸ˜•

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