maesglasau falls–one of the best ice climbs in wales?

Maesglasau Falls IV, 4, Craig Maesglase. Five pitches of pure water ice, in Mid Wales.

Last Wednesday, myself and a certain Mr Williams (the man who thought so much of my belaying last year he decided to fall off of a route and break his heel after landing on me), decided that the weather had been cold enough for long enough, that we would make the trek into Craig Maesglase and have a crack at “one of the best ice routes in Wales” as it was known to be in condition (although the type of condition it turned out to be in was somewhat interesting…read on!)

This route has been right at the very top of my wishlist ever since I first heard about and laid eyes on it last year, and for good reason. Five pitches of steep pure water ice, only 35minutes from home…how can it get any better?

Ok well there is one way it could be better: the approach. Grim doesn’t even begin to describe how utterly disgusting and harrowing the final part of the approach up the stream to the base of the route is. But you can’t have it all can you? Parking is fine, and you begin your approach through the farm – please talk to the farmer on your way through if you head for this route, he is an absolutely stunning chap who is more than happy for people to climb his ice-fall, but who likes to know how many are on it and when so that should anything happen he can initiate rescue proceedings if needs be (there was apparently an incident a few years back where a solo-ist got trapped on the route in bad weather, leading to an absolute rescue epic).

The first pitch wasn’t really ‘in’, we simply solo’d up the side of the very thinly iced waterfall on frozen vegetation (think frozen spray on ice on fern fronds, very weird, but ok to get up really). The second pitch (shown above with Dave leading, and below with me following) was steeper than it looked and actually really good fun, but the meat of the route came in the third pitch – a steep and weirdly formed beast of an icefall, one where I was grateful I’d chosen to give my new nomics an outing!

“Ah it doesn’t look that bad, it’s not that steep!” are words you should never ever utter just before you set up the crux of a rarely formed welsh waterfall. You should also pay attention to where the party in front of you chose to climb the route…

What you can’t see in the picture below is the actual formation of most of the ice in the steeper upper section – it wasn’t a nice uniform homogenised fall, as would be ideal, it had actually formed as a load of mushroomy blobs, that could only be climbed by hooking your axes way over the back of them – hitting just wasn’t an option, nor was placing decent gear in much of it. I ended up run out and a little scared after I’d taken what turned out to be the incorrect line and crossed the still running fall…

…I was left with two options, reverse the terrifying and damn near irreversible and unprotected traverse I’d just made, or climb up the edge of the still flowing waterfall to where I could cross back into the finishing groove. Not being a fan of traverses or admitting my mistakes, of course I carried on upwards, where I was to find myself thanking my lucky stars that I had for the first time in many years decided to completely ‘armour up’ in waterproof hardshell gear.

I feel like I’m a much more ‘rounded’ and ‘experienced’ ice climber, now that I’ve finally experienced what it’s like to have ice water running down my sleeves, down my back and my belly, down my legs, down everything. “I didn’t realise you were getting wet up there” whimpered a completely ice coated Dave upon arriving at the belay after seconding the pitch…

Sat at the belay, having battled to find enough solid ice to sink three ice screws after finally regaining my breath and lowering my heart-rate back to somewhere nearer normal, I couldn’t stop a big grin spread across my face as I realised we were going to do the route. The view out across the valley was beautiful, and the view back down the crux pitch had been breathtaking, mesmerising even, and I was finally able to start taking it all in. This is why I love ice climbing.

As I sat watching the hills start to turn a gorgeous shade of pink, our late start and status of being at the very back of a long queue of climbers on the route that day suddenly hit me. “Oh god, we’re going to end up climbing in the dark!” Quite why that thought bothered me I’m not really sure, I mean I’ve climbed in the dark plenty of times, and in winter it’s often all part of the game. I had a good headtorch, and the hardest pitches were over, I shouldn’t have been at all worried, but somehow I was.

Dave flew up the next pitch and through the weird cavey section where I just stood and gaped for a couple of minutes, not quite able to work out the best way to proceed (obviously being a caver helps when squirming through semi iced-up narrow stream gullies), and eventually we somehow ended up stood at the foot of the final pitch with enough daylight for me to get up the slab and out at the top whilst it was still light! Dave had some fun finding foot placements in the rapidly fading half-light…

So, yeah, we did it, and thankfully the walk-off is nowhere near as unpleasant as the approach (although it did take a while with us both being tired and Dave suffering a bit of foot pain by that point).

Is Maesglasau Falls one of the best ice routes in Wales? I think so. Was it worth the effort? Definitely.

Unfortunately, it’s taken me a while to write this blog entry as I made the mistake of having a crappy fast food meal in the evening before going home, and ended up with a nasty bout of food poisoning. I guess it served me right for choosing to eat crap but I really wouldn’t wish this kind of illness on my worst enemy – spending 4 days without sleeping more than 1-2 hours at a time, expelling 20 times* your own bodyweight, and living with a constant throbbing headache really isn’t fun.

*The amount may be a slight exaggeration

cornwall

I’d never climbed on Cornish granite before, never climbed on our far south western sea-cliffs, not until a couple of days ago that is.

Now, I have climbed on sea-cliffs before – Gogarth and Swanage being the main examples, but I can’t say I particularly like it. In fact, I can quite categorically say that I do not like climbing on sea-cliffs. I find the whole experience morbidly terrifying, I really do. I’ve never liked the water (and this stems from a near drowning experience I’d had at the age of 2), and as such, the thought of climbing above a broiling, tumultuous froth of angry ocean, is for me really rather harrowing.

So there’s my excuse. There’s my feeble attempt to explain why I couldn’t scramble down to the cliffs at Sennen and climb back out. Demo Route still has to wait.

Thankfully though, Bosigran isn’t quite the same kind of sea-cliff – you don’t have to downclimb to a sea-washed ledge and then start climbing directly above it. The main face at Bosigran is set back from the actual sea somewhat, and has a nice simple grassy path underneath the crag, although it’s still a little close to the water for real comfort – I still get mesmerised by the violent swirling cauldron of waves below, and the thunderous sound of them colliding with the rocky landmass still makes me uneasy.

Anyway…

Doorpost. This HS 4b is supposedly the route of the crag. Three very different pitches of really rather wonderful granite climbing, up the main section of the cliff.

I know it was an easy route, but for me ‘Doorpost’ was more than just an easy rock climb – it was my first time climbing on granite (excluding my forays onto Dartmoor with the bouldering mat), my first time climbing in Cornwall, I had to swallow my apprehension of the sea-cliff environment, and the first pitch was a traverse…

Oh yeah, I probably haven’t mentioned my hatred of all routes that go sideways have I? There you go, in this one simple blog entry I have just revealed that I’m really rather pathetic as a rock climber – scared of sea-cliffs, and scared of traverses. Great.

Anyway, I led the first two pitches of Doorpost – the traverse and the crux, then seconded the last pitch so Patrick could take photos of my face rather than just my arse again, and actually, I really rather enjoyed it. I’m not sure Chair Ladder will be on the cards for a while yet, and I still don’t know if I’ll ever suck it up and manage to climb at Sennen, but Bosigran is definitely somewhere I’d like to climb again!

Thank goodness.

Look! I’m leading a traverse!!

 The crux, a surprisingly awkward little sequence

Patrick coming up the classic ‘Alison Rib**’, Diff as an alternative to the walk out!

moel y gest

Monday yielded a visit to another new crag (to me). Somewhat foolishly I agreed to go to Moel y Gest* to check out ‘some of the best rock in Tremadog’, not realising just how bad the bracken at the base of the crag was going to be.

Dave W was my partner for the day, and he only has himself to blame for the walk-in proving to be rather more of a fitness challenge than he had imagined, as he was the one who chose the crag (Dave had a rather unfortunate accident just over a year ago whilst climbing with me – he fell off of a hugely polished limestone horror at Pot Hole Quarry, ripping out the only runner he’d had in at the time. Somehow he managed not to land on his head, merely landing heavily on the heel of one foot, fracturing it rather badly. He’s now determined to get back into climbing, but walking seems to be the greatest hurdle).

One steep uphill slog, and one short painful battle through the head high bracken and ankle grabbing brambles later, we arrived at the base of Bulkhead Buttress (continuing on further to any other sections of the crag truly would be a horrendous brackeny epic at the moment), where I selected a nice looking route to warm up on, that Dave’s printed topo* indicated was an HS 4b called ‘The Ancient Mariner’…

HS my buttocks. The Ancient Mariner is neither HS nor 4b, it is a loose, vegetated, scary VS with mediocre gear and a 4c crux. I seem to have a way with choosing horrible sandbag routes as warm-ups (my visit to Craig Rhiwarth being a case in point). A lovely heathery descent back to the bracken topped off the ‘esoterica’ experience…

I’ll be honest, upon regaining our gear stash I was ready to call it a day – my arms were scratched to bits (note to self: when going to new esoteric crags, wear long sleeves and NEVER wear shorts), and I had bits of heather and mud in places I daren’t mention. The sheer effort we’d gone to (especially Dave) just to get up there meant that only climbing one short route was unacceptable. I was going to try something else. I had my eye on a couple of harder lines further to the left of our first route, Dave assured me that they were actually very good and probably worth some stars in fact (he’d climbed them before), so I chose an E1 5b called ‘Antur Madog’.

The picture doesn’t do the route justice, the guide describes it as being ‘easier than it looks’, and in this regard it didn’t disappoint. The gear was reasonable, the rock was gorgeous (now I know why they say it’s some of the best in Trem) and the moves flowed beautifully with holds only appearing as you got to them. In all honesty, I think it’s probably one of the nicest single pitches I’ve ever climbed, and considering I’ve been such a total coward of late, climbing an E1 that hasn’t scared me but has simply allowed me to revel in the moves, is really saying something. Mind you, lately I have been primarily hanging on minging tiny crimps on 7a limestone sport routes, so this was a refreshing change…

All in all, I think I would recommend the crag to anyone who doesn’t mind a little bit of a walk for single pitch routes, the rock itself really is of the highest quality I’ve climbed on pretty much anywhere, but it’s probably worth seeking out a little local knowledge with regard to which routes are worthwhile and which ones really aren’t. It’s also probably best to go in the Spring or Autumn/Winter to avoid having to battle through the bracken that completely obscures the paths at this time of year, although if you’re a bit of a wildlife fan, we found the place to be a real haven for the common lizard – whole groups of them would pop out from cracks in boulders to sun themselves next to us, truly incredible – I’ve never seen so many in one place.

*Check out the Wiki if you fancy climbing here, there is a link to a pdf document showing all the new routes at the base of the page.

craig rhiwarth – blood, crud and spiders

It is a sunny Sunday on a Bank Holiday weekend, hence today’s little climbing adventure was a trip to a very quiet local crag that I had yet to visit – Craig Rhiwarth in the Tanat Valley. I was generously accompanied by Frank and eventually Phil, but sadly only climbed one route.

Actually it wasn’t really that sad that we only climbed one route, it was simply a case of making the sensible decision to sack it in once we’d discovered that this unloved and rarely frequented little crag was, in fact, mostly a tottering pile of choss and large dolerite blocks held together by mud, cobwebs and brambles.

I may well be doing the place an injustice, as we only paid any real attention to the ‘second crag – lower left’, where the routes of Rose Corner (HVS) and Melangell (VS) were to be found (these were the two I’d had in mind for some reason). We didn’t climb either of these routes though, as after we’d tottered our way up Ivory Tower – (HS 4b with a scary moss-bound unprotected HXS crumbly wall finish – see below), we looked down the final groove of Rose Corner (which is also the finish of Melangell) to see loose shaley flakes, ledges covered in loose rubble, with brambles, grass and a variety of other plants growing from the cracks, along with a slightly scary loose topout, and decided not to bother.

I’m half regretting not doing Melangell as the first part looked lovely, if rather easy (famous last words) – very reminiscent of the final easy pitch of One Step in the Clouds at Tremadog. The second half however, looked decidedly manky, and of course there was the grim looking top groove to reckon with too, which is why I’m not entirely regretting walking away I guess.

So what of the route we did climb? Ivory Tower is one of those routes that looks great from the ground, but when you’re on it suddenly becomes one of those routes that you wish you’d given a miss. There were actually a couple of nice moves up a big layback flake, with lovely grippy dolerite and reasonable gear if you’ve taken some big cams or hexes (I didn’t), it was just a shame that the cracks were full of cobwebs and spiders, and the big blocks in the groove after the flake were hollow and loose and therefore very scary to be climbing around/on/over. Oh and the top out – I’ve already made brief mention of this, but just as you think it’s all over, you find yourself stood on a ledge with a short (2m) vertical wall with a sloping top to climb. “Not to worry!” you might say to yourself, as you take hold of what looks to be a reasonable hold, place your foot on another big reasonable hold and weyhey…bye bye foothold! At this point you may start to wish you could levitate or at least reach the great big bloody tree a few meters to your right, as you look more closely at the holds on this ‘wall’, only to discover it is less of a ‘wall’ and more a stack of rock flakes piled on top of each other and very convincingly doing impressions of a Jenga tower made out of hobnobs and sponge fingers… Mercifully, once you finally commit your life to said hobnob (or sponge finger), you find yourself with an awesome variety of sloping biscuit tops covered in an especially grippy form of moss – perfect to grab onto just as your footholds start to disintegrate.

Anyway, it was a nice day out in the sunshine, the wind only made communication mildly impossible, and I was granted the honour of tripping up on a bramble at the bottom of the descent path and creating a nice jagged gash in my leg. Hence the blood as mentioned in the title.

The crag is in a lovely situation though, with great free parking complete with toilet, a very easy approach and seemingly some potential to be a really nice little venue if only it got more visitors (catch 22 eh?). If the crags received some attention, had a bit of a clean up and perhaps a little gardening, the fantastic immaculate Tremadog style Dolerite would probably yield some mini classics. Hell, I may even go back and do the nice looking little E2 I spied on the way down…

 Left hand, lower tier of the Second crag (see the Meirionnydd Guide)

A beautiful location and crag aspect, and best of all, no bank holiday climbing queues…

sunny spring climbing, part 2

Saturday: I was still not feeling too great so we headed back to the Moelwyns for some more pleasant, relaxed, sunny climbing.

The White Streak/Honeysuckle Corner – HS 4b. (Craig yr Wrygsan) A combination of two routes which in reality should only be one anyway! The guidebooks (both Meirionnyd and North Wales Rock) both give this combo 2 stars, but in all honesty I would easily give it 3, it is a simply fantastic climbing experience. Patrick led the White Streak - a long slab which can be split into two pitches, but is much better just climbed as one long one up to the big ledge (‘the Pasture’) and is quite bold in places (i.e. very little gear of substance), but is climbed on fantastically massive gas pocket jugs – they are holds of wonder, seriously!

So Honeysuckle Corner was my route of choice, and I must say it was a cracker. A steep pull into a corner groove with lots of good holds, some fantastic bridging and great gear (or at least it is if you bother with it), leads you up to some ledges and a huge block belay at the very top of the crag – a fantastic place to enjoy the sun and the view. This pitch is HS 4b, but for some may well seem more like VS simply because of its steepness, but don’t let that put you off, the moves and holds are good and the gear is plentiful – go do it!

The walk down from the top of this crag is also quite something – you wander down the back into some old quarry workings, and make your way down into a tunnel through the crag where the old incline runs. Step over the old incline engine machinery and make your way down through the crag! Turn off to the left down from the incline back to the base of the crag either before the ‘Danger’ sign or just after, it doesn’t matter. Then go and climb something else, even if it is easy…

Y Gelynen – VDiff but with a Severe variation finish. I know, me, climbing a VDiff. A bit of a rarity huh? This was the other route that got 2 stars in the guide and just looked a really nice line, and indeed it was. I would say though, that if you aren’t confident climbing Severe or above, this route may prove a rather serious proposition – the first pitch is described as ‘bold’, so read this as ‘has very little gear and quite alot of exposure’. Good holds though, and so long as you keep your head together and just keep on climbing, rather than looking for gear where there really is none and proceeding to panic, the sanctuary of the somewhat uncomfortable but well endowed flake belay will be yours without any real drama (and yes, I did actually lead this pitch without any drama thank you very much).

The second pitch is quite short but straight forward, although once again is rather lacking in meaningful gear to start with – very simple to second! You end up on the big ‘Pasture’ ledge again, after which a third pitch takes you to the top – here you have a choice of the VDiff option up the steppy buttress part, or the vastly superior and really rather fun groove just to the left of the VDiff line – this variation bumps the grade up to Severe as it has a couple of harder moves, although this time with some good protection options (and as I led the first pitch, I rather pleasantly got to lead this one too). You could run the second and third pitches together if you wanted to as they are both quite short, but we decided it would be more sociable to climb it in two as per the guidebook – so we were able to shout abuse at each other the whole time!

 

The Moelwyns are currently my absolute favourite place to climb, the atmosphere is lovely, the rock is great and the routes are good fun. I just hope it all stays this way and doesn’t become another packed ‘Stanage-esque’ venue where you find yourself queuing for routes polished well beyond their prime state. That said, I do think more people should experience just how wonderful some of these crags are and get a real taste of what Welsh rock climbing is all about.

sunny spring climbing, part 1

It is once again rock climbing season. Sadly I’ve all but given up on any hope of getting any more winter routes in, so what with all the lovely sunshine we’ve been having, I’ve once again embarked on the somewhat painful process of re-adjusting to rock. Sadly it isn’t going as well as it perhaps could for a number of reasons I won’t go into on here, but, that said, I clearly haven’t completely lost the ability to climb, I’m just having some trouble getting my head in gear.

Anyway, enough excuses. This is what I’ve been up to:

Thursday: A lovely day climbing at Tremadog with Ritchie. We decided to take it easy and just repeat a couple of nice ‘straight forward’ routes we had climbed previously. Fairly predictably, the ‘easy’ VS routes felt much, much harder than they should – not good.

Yogi – VS 4b. This route is a bit of a guidebook oddity in that the top pitch appears to be the same for three routes, but with two different technical grades…If anyone can shed any light on the bizarreness in the current Tremadog guide between the second pitches of ‘Yogi’ and ‘Smarter than the Average Bear’ (and indeed, ‘Mr Ranger’), or can provide me with some kind of explanation as to how the crystal filled layback crack can a) be described in two different ways, and b) have two different technical grades (4b or 4c), then please let me know! (There is always the possibility that I’m just being blonde and stupid, but this is unlikely as I’m not the only one confused!) Anyway, this was the third time I’ve climbed this route – it’s a nice ‘easy’ VS with a lovely layback crack on the top [guidebook oddity] pitch, and I highly recommend it! Make sure you bring some small wires for the first pitch though.

Grim Wall – VS 4c. Great route. Not much more to say really! This was the second time I’ve done Grim Wall, and this time I led the easier first pitch seeing as I took the lovely steep crux pitch last time. Sadly I have to admit to behaving like a total wuss when I got to the big hand traversey flake on the first pitch…I really, really, really hate traversing – even if it’s easy (and in this case it really is).

 

Friday: I really wasn’t feeling too good, so a very lazy start landed Patrick and I in the Moelwyns sometime after lunch. We climbed one route (and yes, I know, only climbing one route is pretty pathetic, especially as it was just a Severe).

For anyone who has never been to and experienced the wonders of Blaenau Ffestiniog, the Moelwynian crags provide (in my opinion) some of the best easy to moderate routes in Wales. Strangely, despite their sunny south facing aspect, fantastic unpolished rock, interesting routes and easy access, these crags see relatively few visitors – on Friday we were the only ones on the whole crag! Not that I’m complaining – everyone should just keep on heading to the honeypots of Tremadog, the Pass and the Idwal Slabs…

Block – Severe 4a. (Clogwyn yr Oen) I love the routes here, I really do. Easy enough to simply be able to enjoy the incredible gas pocketed rock with all its fabulous threads and cracks and super rough texture, but still interesting enough to make for a great climbing experience. This route can only be found in the Meirionnydd guide as it wasn’t deemed good enough to go in the selected North Wales Rock book, but, like its unsung neighbouring routes it is actually very good.

I must note though, that the guidebook description is not exactly brilliant – the ‘37m’ first pitch is actually 50m to the belay at the base of the corner – I know this because I reached the end of my 50m ropes on the damp grass slope about 2m before the corner (where the magical frictional qualities of smooth rock shoe rubber on wet grass once again came abruptly into focus). You could actually split this pitch half way at a convenient ledge and crack system, and in fact I highly recommend you do this. I am also going to recommend that you run the last two pitches described in the guidebook into one as there is absolutely no sane reason not to.