I packed up my tools, poons and all my other winter gear in the vain hope of good conditions this weekend. Instead I manged to get some burning sunshine at Gogarth!
We set out not exactly as early as I'd hoped (something to do with beer/hangover again). Driving to Wales me and Andy had rain, wind and what looked like not good conditions for anything other than drinking tea in pete's. Having missed the turning off the A55 for Llanberis (I've no idea how I missed it) we found ourselves heading for Gogarth and the possibility of good weather. We stopped off at Macdonalds. I haven't been there in ages and suffering from a hangover it probably wasn't the best food to eat, however it kept me going for the rest of the day.
We pulled into the South Stack carpark about 12ish and looked at the gloomy clouds clustering around Holyhead Mountain. Our objective was Gogarth's Main cliff on account of our lack of abseil rope. If you've not been to Main cliff then I'll tell you it has a walk-in but, BE WARNED it's not exactly a walking for the faint hearted! It is a great laugh though and get you into a great place at the base of Main cliff. at this point the sun was shining, well burning down on us. I had to strip off our extra warm layers and pack them away in the sack. The weather was actually gorgeous and I couldn't believe our luck.
Our proposed routes for the day were a link up of Simulator (VS 4c) and Bezel (VS 5a) which would take us up a initial cliff, across a grass slope and then up the final groove line of Bezel. The guide book read that Bezel was hard for the grade at VS but was well protected. This line should have let us top out and walk off from the top of main cliff (hence the sack with the shoes in it). I took the first pitch...
what are you faffing around for? just hold it and move on
no because I can't hold it, I don't have gear in... I just can't do this...
that right run away then, back off....
This would have been the arguement you could hear going on in my head at the crux of the first pitch. After my ego boosting performance last sundance re-climbing a scary slab route on the grit (San Melas E3 5c) I was getting scared on a multi-pitch VS at only 4c. To say I was scary was an understatement. I've climbed harder and scarier stuff than this is winter, what was up with me?
I think I know what was up. It was steep, the waves crashing beneath our feet, gulls screaming in the skies above and below. We where alone on the cliff and would have to get ourselves out of any mess. It was exactly where I wanted to be, but I was still scared.
As it happened I didn't fall off, and I made the move trusting the rubber on my shoes to stick and my hands and arms to actually work and hold on. It was as I had hoped easier ground there after and I belayed happily below Andy's pitch. Andy came up with much swearing and anger at the crux (he did have the sack on after all) and arrived happy yet angry at the climb. Many mutterings of "this isn't bloody 4c" we heard as he started the next pitch. Even more mutterings were heard when he turned round, backed off and said "you lead it". I took the sack and headed off.
This quickly went from a hard move to a eaiser scramble with a bit of loose rock, some turf and a few wet holds. I enjoyed it loads and yelled up Andy to join me at the belay. He came up and ran up the turf to the base of Bezel.
Bezel is a climb I've tried before. My first attempt at it was with Tom when Me, Tom, Toaf and Soames went to main cliff the first time. A humbling experience as I'd just done Emulator (E1 5b) and thought a mere VS would be well easy. Stupidly neither me or tom read the topo/description properly and I had to bail off the first pitch leaving behind a prusik (on if many I lost last year actually). After a new and better guide book, and a decent amount of time spent reading the topo and finding the line I set off. I was about 5 metres off in my first attempt! I sent the first pitch with no problems.
The light was fading but I thought we'd got more than enough time to complete the route without head torches. Not wanting to get caught out I stuffed mine on my helmet, just in case. The route had 1 pitches to go (25m on and a 9m), but I assured Andy I would just run them together and we'd top out soon enough. We'd actaully discussed bailing off the route already but I'd failed once and a little darkness never stopped anyone. We had head torches anyway.
So I lead the next pitch which started off with some stretchy bridging. I'm not so flexible so I could feel this pulling the muscles in my legs. It was full of gear opptunities all the way up (loads of slings and nuts) and I cruised up. I'd switched on my headtorch, but only noticed I'd actually needed it when I got the the next stance. This concerned me a little but I pushed on through wanting to top out.
The last pitch was a fist fight with a hand jamming crack. It was awesome! The crack wasn't smooth sided like grit cracks and all the little quarzite nubbins and edges dug into my hands. The jams themselves felt so insercure I thought I would fall off but I couldn't put anymore outward pressure on them as my hand hurt so much. Tap would have been a blessing. I topped out in the pitch black, shaking with fear and adrenaline. I probably had the biggest grin on my face ever that I hadn't fallen off. It would all be over soon and we could head to the pub.
This is were I was slightly mistaken. As andy started up the pitched he yelled up:
"Errr... I've dropped my headtorch, I can't climb this in the dark"
So after a bit of thought and in my scared state from the last pitch I lowered Andy to the last stance, tied off the ropes and abseiled to Andy. We then abseil to the bottom of the pitch intending to walk out and round to the top and pull up the ropes. We put or shoes back on to walk out and low and what did we find in Andy's boot... his flipping headtorch! He reasoned it was probably easier and safer if we both just walked back along the path because prusiking up would be: 1. hard work and in the dark, 2. Andy had not really prusiked before and 3. the walk off would probably be safer with 2 people. So off we walked.
The scramble off is even worse in the dark but it was a fun walk off. I thought we'd just find the ropes quickly and then head home. This was not the case. I've never been to the top of maincliff before and it's well, horrendous in the dark. After an hours hunting around on slippy rock and 80 degree turf I called it a day and went back to Andy. After a minor stress at the sky about everything all we could do was laugh and reside ourselves to come back in the morning after a well earned beer in the pub. Simply put we left my ropes, which have seen me through 2 years of hard climbing, summer and winter and caught me when I've fallen off, hanging at gogarth.
We had a good night in the pub but kept running over the events of the day. What had we done wrong? what if we'd have done this or that? should I have done things differently? did we make the right decisions? What could we have done better? Three pints later and my tent to myself meant I stayed up and thought about this alot. I came to the conclusion that I should have rigged a retreivable abseil with the hoards of tat I'd brought with me and just sacrificed a piece of cord. Then we could have got out with the rope. I think even before that we should started earlier in the day, meaning we wouldn't have got caught out and climbed a little quicker maybe hauling the sack instead of climbing with it.
We went back the next day and rescued my ropes, which involved me prusiking back up them (after some serious bouce testing) as we both figured it would be eaiser just to top out that way. Amazingly it had not rained at Gogarth and my ropes were dry and coiled up at the bottom just as I'd left them. The walk out was something I would rather have done with axes and crampons on, or actually pitched with a climbing partner. We gave up climbing that day because we wanted to go to Wen Zawn but had no absiel rope, and out hero factor was running pretty low. We just met some friends and wondered the dinorwig quarry a little.
So what did I learn about Gogarth. Well it's a great place to test yourself and then learn from the experience. I'll put something up on the "lessons learned from sea-cliff climbing" when I get round to it. It should be quite interesting as although I've made plently of mistakes there, pretty much every day has been one of the best days out.
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