Its been a great week, however the work stopped last night, and I enjoyed a few pints in the Heights Hotel, I will have to do a blog on the Heights, as it is just incredible. Anyway I awoke to a fuzzy head, and sunshine, but the wind is still from the North so we headed to Gogarth with no fixed plans.
It was only as we arrived at Holyhead that we decided that South Stack was the crag of choice, as it had a cafe for more panads (tea/coffee for my readers the otherside of the Offa’s Dyke). The Cafe is amazing, it was taken over last april, and now opens year round, and the RSPB people who run it are really pro climbers, they are even getting a few bits and bobs for climbers, like chalk, quickdraws and other stuff you might forget. They seem very happy for us to park in the far side of the car park and have a brew before heading on down, although they said that the car park is free for everyone, but its nice to support the RSPB.
Anyway with the crag decided we then had to think of a route, so we looked in the old 1986 guide, and I found Were Puffin’s Daren’t a high level girdle traverse from Castel Helen to Yellow Wall. It got a star, and was in the graded list. We ended up starting from the Castell Helen uber ledge, as I had started the route before from Lighthouse arete area.
The route was awesome and worth at least two stars, a bit loose in places but easy in those places. The highlights are the pitch that follows North-west Passage and then goes to the True Moment Freebird Belay. After that a easy pitch gets to the start of a rampline running across yellow walls to the exit corner of Creeping Leema. Although easy, is it nothing if not exposed.
The final pitch is meant to be a reverse down right to a good hold on the arete, before heading left up the groove, I headed direct, which wasn’t that hard or bold. After looking at the guide again I realised that due to 15ft of different climbing on our first pitch we had climb the Castel Helen Girdle a great E1, although Were Puffin’s Daren’t at HVS has an identical finishing 3 pitches. So seeing as I have climbed all the pitches I could have claimed My 94th and 95th routes at Gogarth.
However I settled for 94, the 95 route was a pokey little E1 on the left handside of Yellow Wall called, The Savage.
A great day out.
Remember there are seven days, and eight sleeps till the glorious!