Well I spent this morning running round Ogwen with Llion, looking at the various descent off the Milestone and Idwal Slabs. we of course soloed a few easier routes to get to the descents. It was a little frantic as we had a 2pm deadline, mainly due to the the rain moving up from the south. After that I decided to have a pop at Monolith Crack.
If you haven’t heard of this route, or climbed it then it is a quintesential tight chimney. The first pitch is a doddle, the first chimney of teh second pitch is fine, as long as you don’t clip your harness into the stuck wire, and wonder why you can’t make headway no matter how hard you try. Getting untangle from that was something of a mini epic. The main event though is a third, very tight slot.
Now I don’t consider myself very large, but I couldn’t get into it at all. Even after some serious relaxation exercises and breathing out I would get to a point panic and have to force myself back out.Now this continued for a good fifteen minutes before I realised that I was too scared to go any further. As to actually move in I had to breathe out, and when wedged it was hard to breathe. We escaped out right and this way the monolith crack light was still a great route. So I can safely say I failed on a VS today!
As we drove back it started raining, and sure enough the call outs started. I headed up to find a group that could barely place themselves on Snowdon. Let alone give a good grid reference. I kind of lost my sense of humour with them when after a bit of a wild goose chase I finally caught up with teh group on teh PYG track, and two of them were paddling, boots off in a stream! I can’t remember my exact words but it revolved around getting you &*$£”!!! boots on and walking down the mountain as I have a life to get back to!
A couple of the rest of the group that wee further ahead asked me what I do for a living, and when told that i was a mountaineering instructor, they asked what that entailed. I could resist the sarcasm of saying that I teach people to use a map and compass, read the weather reports, plan an appropriate day and to dress appropriately for a walk in the mountains and not the high street. I think it may have been lost on them.
I had an invite for dinner at a friends, he has a great place with a window that overlooks Pete’s Eat, I could sit there for hours. I saw a guy I had on a climbing course a while back, and had a breif chat through teh window, but nothing was as good as what my friends saw last night in the top window of Pete’s Eat, a suitable censorship really. As, how can I put this so my mum can read it, a man was being a cunning linguist, drinking deeply from the furry cup, chowing down on her unkempt kebab. I did try and search Roger’s Profanasauras, but there isn’t an online version!
Anyway the show seems to have been for one night only, as to our disapointment there was no one there this evening!