The choice of crags to climb on today was immense, a reasonably long spell of dry weather, a high pressure the size of western Europe and a psyche Bunney. We choose rather than to fry at Gogarth the mountains would be good, so headed up to the Mot for a bit of shade. I had heard of the route Jubilee Climb, and heard the crux was particular hard for a HVS, but the climbing good.
We weren’t disppointed, as the climbing was amazing the first two pitches climb on the same rock that you find on the Nose of Dinas Mot, however these pitches aren’t polished, and provide amazing climbing the main difficulties of both pitch revolve around grit like cracks and slabs.
At the top of pitch two you reach what can only be described as a jump through geologic time, to the most grit like rock in the Pass, if not Wales. The friction is good and above looms a roof with a steep crack leading upwards via a wide section to a slabbing off. At HVS 5b it look amusing, and when you come to climb it you get the Joke. If it was E3 I might have fallen off, it was only because the grade was HVS that I refused to and kept on plugging away at the two cracks. It was a bit the Strapiombo or whatever it is at Froggat that hideous HVS roof crack just right of the classic E5.
Anyway above was a great 5a slab that Bunney ran up in good style, it two however had a grit like slab and a grit like crack. It was an astonishing climb, and totally under rated, given the choice between that or Cenotaph corner then this route would win hands down of both variety and position. However it is often wet, and in the shade so needs a day that is both very dry and very warm to be pleasant!
We descended down Jammed Boulder Gully, and decided to head over to the Glass Flipper Crag. We did the right hand of the lines, and it is like 3 grit VS slabs on top of one another, very foreshorten the route is actually over 30 metres long, probably near 40, and requires a belief in the grit like friction to pad up. Whilst run out the crux is probably getting off the ground and the descent, however there is a great thread and I left behind my prussic to abseil down said gully.
The reward for our grit day out was Ice Cream in Georgio’s, where rachel told us that Al had done the first ascent but never credited with it. There are a few of these wrongful credits in guides. I know of a couple where I climb the route before and never wrote it up only to find the route in a new guide. Similarly I have claimed routes, and subsequent found the route had already been climbed.
One route on the Slate, I found was cliams once before as one route, and then Hosey who did even more routes book digging found that it had been claim before that! Anyway I think it was the Glass Flipper we climbed, need to check the guidebook.
