Climbing weekend

[yokehead]

Back to Wales with Mark for 3 days of climbing. Incredible weather, very hot especially for May, but very windy at times as well. Stayed at the usual campsite in our usual spot!

May 25, travelled up in the morning, the afternoon spent on Little Tryfan again.

May 26, an early stroll along to the Milestone Buttress on Tryfan to climb Pulpit Route. An absolute delight in location, climb and conditions.

just after the start

the huge brown boulder!

down the valley to Ogwen

nice sense of height

on the way down

other climbers at the start of the route

our climb just to the right of centre

The day was still young so we drove over to Tremadog with the intention of climbing Bramble Buttress on Craig y Gesail. We got part way up but baled out given how overgrown it was. Good fun!

Bramble Buttress

We got back to the campsite to find that the wind had flattened some folk's tents and strewn gear around the campsite. Now, we wouldn't usually laugh, but since these people had arrived late last night and made an almighty racket needlessly crashing about for hours putting up their tents in the dark, I confess it was hilarious. The last laugh was on us though since they got back in the dark and repeated the previous night's performance!

flattened tents

May 27, our final day was once again full sun and heat, we went off the beaten track to Yr Arddu near Nantmor. This was in one of Mark's books and turned out to be a great move! I only looked up this location myself recently, it was interesting to find that Showell Styles was one of, if not the first to explore these modest crags. Apparently he also ascended nearby Cnicht hundreds of times. And he wrote over a hundred books in his full life.
We had a bit of trouble actually finding the crag, tramping over the interesting country. Once there the first thing we did was find a rock to shelter under from the sun and have a brew, superb! We did a few climbs here, beautiful location and no other folk around!

the crag

rest time!

Cnicht left, and Moelwyn Mawr

climbing

Another interesting walk back by another route to the car, to give a circuit. We approached Yr Arddu from the west, with hindsight it may be faster to walk in from Croesor, using the track to Cnicht.