Approaching No. 4 Gully

Well my final day on the hill with PYB, and I was heading up No. 4 Gully with a team of Mountaineers. The weather started off good and got better. Hopefully the photos will convey just how good it got. The wind which you can’t se was little to non exsistent.

So I saw loads of action as I wandered about, firstly I spent the day with the Dave Macleod, so I can now say along with 12 people from Cotswolds that I have soloed a route with Dave Mac on the Ben. Sadly, well thankfully it was only grade one. It was interesting to note that he took his mixed climbing axe with him. It has been noted that a growing number of grade 1 gully climbers are taking to using Nomics Axes, which has resulted in a national shortage, however I believe that they are living up to the name, as these highly technical axes are now in the hands of climbers who do No Mixed (No-mic) climbing.

We saw that youth greg boswell (sic?) tearing up Apache Wall, as well as Inis and her partner trying to repeat one of Greg new hard first ascents. Rumour has it that there was some air taken by the team. Although Inis was overheard saying that “Das conditions are Uber!”

Anyway here are some piccies f our awesome day, suffice to say that the clients were over the moon with the day that Plas Y Brenin provided.

Greg Boswell on Apache Wall

Exiting No. 4 Gully up the slot of thinness

The final head wall

Not your typical Punter running up a gully with a state of the art mix tool! Dave Macleod what a punter. Not!

Inis climbing partner goes for the top of Greg Boswell's recent new route, just as the whole world above him starts thawing.

Plodding to the summit

Snow Bunting on teh Summit Trig point

Summit and Glory

Not a day for Pink wellies! Nice to see they have total tools in Scotland as well!

A 5 to 10 degree overhanging, and absolutely blank slab of rock. Having heard various suggestion for the venue from chipping an extremely hard sports route up it to placing a series of ‘bolt-on’ holds to make an outdoor climbing wall. The problem is the wall is dark and damp, rarely ever dries, and probably the last time it saw direct sunlight was prior to rock metamorphosing into Slate. I have dropped many hints to people who mix climb or have dry tooled over the years but, no one took the idea on. My thoughts were if I tried to set a route having had no experience of dry tooling the route would be crap.

Owain Samuels of Ibex Guides preparing the first dry tooling route in Wales.

Fortunately two very driven people have decided to have a go, and experiment on the wall, hoping to establish the dinorwic quarries first ever M grade route. Now before people get on there high horses about ethics, I am going to give you all my opinion.
1. This wall is and has been redundant since it was quarried, as such no routes are really being effected.
2. The locals developing this see it as a limited experiment to this one wall at present to see whether Slate makes a suitable medium.
3. Chipping has happen historically in the quarries since the very beginning. Of particular relevance is the wall with Satisfying Frank Bruno on, where Paul Pritchard basically drilled finger pockets!

For any mixed climber who question the validity of dry tooling. Every time I climb a route that winter climbers scratch there way up I can’t help think that if I did that to a route at stanage I would be shot. Whilst many mixed climbers argue that its everyone else who climbs when the route isn’t in condition that damages the rock, I can’t help feeling that they are only trying to fool themselves. As if the route is covered in snow, I often see climbers do there best to scrap it all off to revel the rock. May be dry tooling is the future, maybe we should realise that winter climbing damages the rock that as a climber I love, and set aside routes for the tooled up to trash!

Anyway, before long there will be at least one route, hopefully two or three more in the slate quarries.