Poor visibility and high winds enveloped much of North Wales for the weekend. I took Julie, Lina and Rory on their first trip over Crib Goch, followed by a traverse of the Nantlle Ridge on the Sunday. Given their lack of scrambling experience and fear of the exposure they handled the damp rock very well!
To cap off the weekend, a good lead from Al up the corner followed by my first E1 in quite some time with Cemetery Gates. We were somewhat humbled to watch a couple of lads ticking almost every route on both walls, but otherwise a brilliant weekend of climbing in North Wales.
We planned to complete an enchainment of four routes across the southern side of the Llanberis Pass. A late start due to rain meant we began on a slippery, dripping first pitch of The Cracks. Slow Ledge Climb followed and we missed a route on Cyrn Las to finish with Gambit Climb and Reade's Route. All were brilliant, including Reade's where I ran two and a half pitches together before the rope went taut!
Its rare to get a whole Friday to climb on a long weekend so Al and I made the most of the fine weather on Dinas Mot. A couple of good quality starred VS routes in preparation for tomorrow's enchainment.
Myself and Clay decided to finish the week with Papillions Ridge. We caught up with and overtook Steve, Hana and Verity near the start and cruised up some superb rock with the others never far behind. Nearing the top of the final tower a tremendous storm broke with heavy hail and rain. We abb'd down the descent gully slightly scared and were thankful that the others also made it down ok, mostly thanks to Steve's cool head and well-packed rucksack!
Clay and I teamed up with Hana for an ascent of the Aiguille d'Argentière by the Flechè Rousse Ridge. We had beautiful weather and our trip was only hampered by a poor Camptocamp description which wasted a few hours of route finding between the gendarmes. 15 hours later we were down at the hut.
