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. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Exposed Route,
Snowdonia Climbing,
V Diff
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. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Amphitheatre Buttress,
Climbing Route,
Ogwen,
Snowdonia Climbing,
V Diff
My brother David and I climbed this on the Sunday of a weekend expedition to North Wales, following an epic climb up the mighty Amphitheater Buttress on the Saturday.
Let me start by saying that there only one way to describe the walk-in to this climb… Evil! It’s actually more of a “scramble-in” (on all fours) up a super steep scree field, and will take anyone and everyone at least 30 minutes (probably more like 40 minutes). At least it starts at the roadside, there’s parking right opposite the crag, but get there early as it gets very busy. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Climbing Route,
Flying Buttress,
Snowdonia Climbing,
V Diff
Date of climb: Sunday 2nd August 2009
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.
Nova is a really cool climbing route which requires a variety of techniques to reach the top. The first couple of moves are pretty straight-forward, then it gets interesting as you try to work your way over to an upward crack. One of the moves had David stumped for about 10 minutes as he came up second (it probably didn’t help that I was chuckling at him from the top). There’s a couple of small but comfy ledges on which you can stand to place gear, and the route is pretty well protected all the way up. I found the crux move to be the second to last one on the final crack, I had to jam my fingers as I placed some gear to protect me over the top. The awkward stance combined with faffing around to find the appropriate piece of kit had my arm (and heart pumping).
In summary, I can recommend this as a very rewarding climbing route for all you HS leaders out there. I can also highly recommend the fantastic 3 Tree Climb (HS) over at the Great Harry area. I’ll cover that in more detail soon.
Let me know how you get on.
Tagged as:
Climbing Route,
Hard Severe,
Lawrencefield,
Peak District
