The New Slate Guide... finally!

Long have I been waiting for the new slate guide to come out. Long enough actually for me to appreciate how good my old '92 slate guide is... and it's additional purple folder! Allow me to explain. I'm only a youngster when it comes to slate. To be honest I've only been climbing for the last 9 years or so of my life (climbing has seemed to dominate those years though) but I've been climbing on the slate for something like the last 3, but I've loved it. I actually recently fell out of love with that series of big purple-hued-grey holes in the ground that surround Llanberis because I'd reached bit of a ceiling. It wasn't that I'd climbed all the routes in there that I could climb, but more like I wasn't inspired to climb them. Soames a few months ago came along and changes all that by getting me the crux of Khubla Khan (I got rained off and I've not been back). But my love of that slatey goodess is back.

When the new guide was announced last week, Soames was the first person to tell me about it.I followed the progress of V12 in getting the order and when a chance came to head to wales climbing for the weekend, I jumped at it. My first impressions of the guide after a brief flick through were that I was impressed. It was clear that a lot of work had gone into this book, and judging by it's thickness (compared to the last guide) there would be a host of new routes and topo's in there. But wait a minute, why has it taken so long for the slate guide to be released. I think that there are a few reasons, well two really. There has been considerable development in the past couple of years throughout the quarries. If you've been following the slate wiki then you'll have seen routes going up all over the place. I guess that they've been trying to grade check all of them. The other reason for the held release date, I think, is the access situation. During the filming of "Clash of the Titans" we can all remember the quarries being closed. Also there was a few incidents with Dali's Hole. This eventually calmed down once the fence went up and the low grade sport routes were taken down (I still think this is a good thing). 


Sadly quarry access is something I've been following with a little interest (primarily because I like climbing there and don't fancy the idea of being banned) but seeing as a lot of investment (both financial and time) has gone into this guidebook, it makes more sense to release it when the access situation is good. Seeing as winter is coming and autumn generally has rather poor weather the quarries will take a beating this time of year. With the release of a new guide, how many people do you think will flock there? I just hope that access is sorted.




Things that hit me straight away are the excellent photographs throughout the book, seemingly the same construction (and therefore quality) as the Gogarth North and North Wales Rock guidebooks. The guidebook construction is something I'll tackle later and good pictures don't make a guide. Having said that I was so please when I opened it and started reading. The best place to start is the beginning and the opening sections about what slate it like as a rock type and what gear to carry I thought were very well put (it did recomment skyhooks as fair gear but mainly useful for bailing in the rain). Then each section is well described (like each area of the quarries). The maps are well drawn and seem pretty simple to use (although this might be a little biased as I know my way round the quarries pretty well). I plan on testing this when I go slate climbing with someone who not been there and make them find the route.


What really impressed me was that the main wall of Twll Mawr, Gideon and the Nant Peris quarries (heaven forbid you'd want to climb there!) had decent topos and frank but excellent descriptions. Twll Mawr really does come across as the very dangerous but equally fascinating place to climb and the Gideon Slab actually looks like I'll be able to climbing on it finally (I've never been able to work out where any of the lines go based on the old descriptions). 


The grading seems to be pretty good throughout the quarries. There haven't been that many grade revisions or changes (from sport/trad etc) but the ones that have I've ran over with Soames (who may as well own the quarries as he's climbed there so much) and he agreed with them. Interestingly there's routes in there graded with British Trad, French spot, Drytooling, Aid climbing (mit peggage) and Clean aid climbing. There's still a good few routes as the magically enticing grade of XS and they've still include the obscure alpine grade of ABO for one route. I don't know why but I like this. I really seems to show the broad diversity of climbing in the slate quarries, which is something I like about them and should stay. I think there's enough rock in there that you don't need to retrobolt every route going. The specific style of traditional slate climbing is so important to maintain and (and I'll make a big claim here) so unique to the British climbing scene. 

Next along the line of things I feel the need to comment on is the historical section. If you read anything I've written about guidebooks before then you'll know my stance with regards to the historical sections. They are important. They stop climbing being reduced down to a number and a grade and keep the flow of stories and history behind each route alive. Since the slate quarries are relatively young (with regards to a lot of the mountain crags in North Wales) they're history is 1, quite well recorded and 2, quite brief and 3, a lot of the people around in the original boom are still alive. The guidebook itself doesn't really have a dedicated history section, instead preferring to spread the history out over the book. These come in the form of "Diary of a Slatehead". These little diary style entries look back at how little sections of the quarries were developed and who put up what routes. Coupled with a sort of "Character Profile" of prolific slateheads throughout the book this gives a great overall history of the quarries and an insight into the driving force behind their development.


Wow! that's a lot of writing about one guidebook but I guess you can imagine that I've been waiting along time for this to come out. Slate climbing is something special and I think on the new guidebook they've done a really good job!