My brother David called me late one night to tell me that a mate of his had been waxing lyrical about a certain climbing route in the Lake District. This particular mate knows his onions. He has an extensive climbing portfolio including several trips to the alps. For him to describe this route as one of his all time favourites grabbed our attention. The route? Troutdale Pinnacle.
From the category archives:
Climbing routes
A place to share your route experiences (without giving too much away for readers wanting to claim on-sight ascents). If you have climbing routes you would like to tell us about, especially if you really had to fight with it all the way (we want to feel your anguish followed by deep sense of satisfaction), drop us an email at: gareth(at)rockclimbinguk.co.uk
Don’t let the fact that this climb is only a moderate (or a grade 3 scramble depending on who you talk to) put you off. It keeps you involved and interested from the word go, and the exposure up the ridge is fantastic!
Like many sports, rock climbing carries an element of risk. When you move from indoor climbing to trad climbing outdoors that risk becomes a little greater. You hope that when gravity wins the day and you do fall off, that the protection you placed prevents you from making contact with terra firma. Unfortunately for me, last weekend I fell off, my protection failed and I made a very firm connection with the ground!
It was a warm and bright Sunday morning, but a short downpour the night before left us with a fair bit of moisture on the ground. Still recovering from my fall on Milestone Buttress the previous morning, my ribs and arm were extremely sore and as such served provided a constant, throbbing reminder of what can happen when you fall off when rock climbing. The sun appeared to be drying the rocks in the Ogwen Valley, but I still felt a little apprehension at the idea of climbing on less-than-dry rock.
Having climbed a few decent outdoor routes, my brother David and I were really keen to try multi-pitch climbing on something BIG! We had so far managed outdoor lead climbs up to a grade of VS, and around a 5C indoors.
David’s mates Paul and Stuart showed us a pretty easy route called Middlefell Buttress, 97m Diff at Langdale in the Lake District. The climbing was easy, but in some places exposed which made for really enjoyable climbing. Needless to say, we were hooked!
I decided to start trawling the internet for big multi-pitch climbs, and came across one or two blogs describing a climb called the Amphitheatre Buttress, in the Ogwen Valley, Wales. The pictures posted on these blogs made my jaw drop, and at 294m, it was to be out biggest climb to date (by a long way). What’s more it’s only graded as V Diff, so well within our technical ability. I told David about the climb and we started to make plans for our Snowdonia climbing expedition.
This was our second trip to Lawrencefield, and it didn’t start too well. We got all the way down to the crag and I realised that I had left the guidebook in the car – doh! I had to run all the way back to the surprise view car park.
We started on the Gingerbread Slab, David kicked things off with a pretty easy V Diff called Snail Crack, which we had climbed on our previous visit. I decided the raise the stakes and go for a HS called Nova.
