After the successes of yesterday out on the slabs will and I decided that there was simply too much good climbing in the Ogwen valley to bother traveling anywhere else. We kipped the night in the valley and were up good and early to get on the climbs before the rest of the bank holiday traffic turned up.
Final chimney pitch on Direct Route, rather thrutchy.
Having done all the climbs that we wanted to do on Idwal we decided to hit up some of the smaller crags in the valley. The idea was to do lots of shorter multi-pitch climbs. (multi-pitch climbs are climbs that require more than one rope length to get to the top).
We headed over to Milestone Buttress on Tryfan. We climbed;
Direct route - this cheeky but fun climb was a superb start to the day, it had one interesting pitch which required a delicate traverse and then a step over a cave to another slab. it was gripping stuff. The final pitch was a polished chimney that required the climber to "thrutch" their way up (basically stick half your body into the chimney and brutally wriggle your way up). After that we nipped back down and climbed up
Sopgut with Chimney finish - This was very interesting climbing. after an initial corner climb, by Will, to a small ledge belay I took the lead up the second pitch. I have to confess that I was placing gear left right and centre and when I reached the top of the crack and it opened out to a large grassy chimney I decided to build a belay and bring Will up to finish up the last pitch to the top.
We headed over to Milestone Buttress on Tryfan. We climbed;
Direct route - this cheeky but fun climb was a superb start to the day, it had one interesting pitch which required a delicate traverse and then a step over a cave to another slab. it was gripping stuff. The final pitch was a polished chimney that required the climber to "thrutch" their way up (basically stick half your body into the chimney and brutally wriggle your way up). After that we nipped back down and climbed up
Sopgut with Chimney finish - This was very interesting climbing. after an initial corner climb, by Will, to a small ledge belay I took the lead up the second pitch. I have to confess that I was placing gear left right and centre and when I reached the top of the crack and it opened out to a large grassy chimney I decided to build a belay and bring Will up to finish up the last pitch to the top.
Will thrutching his way up Zig Zag.
After this thrilling climbing we headed back to the car for a spot of lunch. We relaxed in the van for a while before deciding that we should probably do some more climbing. So we headed back to Idwal cottage and over to Clogwyn Y Tarw and had a pop up;
ZigZag - we ended up doing this climb in 4 pitches. This unorthodox method meant that I led the first thrutchy chimney then belayed on a rather polished sloping ledge. Will then led the second thrutchy chimney, a very short pitch, to the large sloping quartz ledge above and a much better belay stance. I then led the next thrutchy chimney which was an exciting pitch, I belayed on a massive spike above so that I could get some good pictures of Will committing to the thrutch. Will then nipped up the last few slabby sections to the top. A really fun little climb.
We got back to the bottom of the crag before deciding that we where pretty tired and that the climbs wold be there another day. So we bumbled down to the vans and headed off to Tremadog to get ready for another days climbing.
ZigZag - we ended up doing this climb in 4 pitches. This unorthodox method meant that I led the first thrutchy chimney then belayed on a rather polished sloping ledge. Will then led the second thrutchy chimney, a very short pitch, to the large sloping quartz ledge above and a much better belay stance. I then led the next thrutchy chimney which was an exciting pitch, I belayed on a massive spike above so that I could get some good pictures of Will committing to the thrutch. Will then nipped up the last few slabby sections to the top. A really fun little climb.
We got back to the bottom of the crag before deciding that we where pretty tired and that the climbs wold be there another day. So we bumbled down to the vans and headed off to Tremadog to get ready for another days climbing.