Slate access...

After reading the artical on the BMC website about the slate quarries I thought I'd sum it all up simply for anyone who reads this blog, I'm also going to add my own suggestions:

- Stay away from Dali's Hole. The bolts have been removed on the lower grade sport route. In my opinion I think this is a good thing.
- Find climbs and routes off the beaten track, explore more.
- Don't get into confrontation with the sercurity guards. I know it's going to be tempting, but it'll only aggrevate the situation. Pass on any concerns to the local BMC representitive if you must.
- Try and keep your group size to a minium.

The slate quarries are vast, people don't realise how far up the hillside they stretch. On top of this, once your bored with the Dinorwig Quarries, there is always the esoteric madness of the Gideon quarry, if you can fathom the guidebook descriptions. At present there is a tenious access situation within the quarries and this has seemed to conicide with rise in the popularity of slate. Slate itself is a delicate rock, and quite prone to polish & wear and tear (just look at some on the nut placements on Seamstress). It is also somewhat of an elitist rock type, especially for trad climbing (or trad mixed). Well it was anyway till the recent bolting of many good sport lines within the quarry.It being so accessable and such a good damp weather option due to it's short drying time has only added to its popularity.

Personally I love slate climbing. It love the fact that it is just a massive playground to explore, with scary trad routes climbing out if lost and forgotten holes dug into a mountain. It's a place for exploration, to feel fear and to be humbled. The sport climbs have done much to open up the quarry for a wider ability of climbers, it's not something I'm happy with if I'm honest.

A final note is that with the current access situation, why not go somewhere else, away from the slate. Just up the road there is a magical place called Llanberis pass with hard testing single pitch routes to winding multipitch climbs that take you far from the maddening crowd. I'v climber there for 4 days in my climbing lifetime and barely scratched the surface. So get out, explore the delights of mountain rhyolite and leave slate alone, it'll always be there.