For a couple of weeks I've been looking forward to going away with Soames with the intention of new routing somewhere. It has been quite a while since we've made it back to "our" cliff on the Lleyn and there is a route there that is eating away at me... slowly. We never actually made it to the Lleyn, but we did get to see the sea, and spend a day walking the coast and climbing on the cliff there. We went to Rhoscolyn.
I arrived at Soames house at some god unearthly hour on Saturday morning to find the kettle on ready for tea. Soames then produced a pen and paper and his tiny laptop on which he had a topo of Porth Y Garan (which can be found here). Armed with our tiny sketch map of new routing possibilities and a sense of adventure we packed up and left.
I didn't realise how much just going climbing meant to me. I don't mean going out for a day's bouldering with routes or problems in mind. Or going out to massage you're ego (or help someone else massage thiers). Going climbing, without any worry about grade or line, especially next to the sea (and to quote johnny readhead) nourishes the soul.
The little cliff we were climbing at is situated in front of a quaint little bay. The bay itself is sheltered on most sides from the wind and would have made an amazing place to spend the night. It's somewhere I hope I'll remember to head back to in the summer. There is just so much climbing there and a lot of it is unrecorded or untopoed (new word I guess) at least. I could imagine long summer evenings soloing across beautiful rock while the sun sets over the Irish sea. The rock isn't perfect but it is compact and has great friction. At the same time it is a little loose and crumbly in places. It seems to be quite a soft rock to climb on and I managed to crumble a few gear placements when I was tugging my gear to set it. Whatever, it's a lovely place to climb.
We went armed with a small topo of the right hand crag, as this was where most of the new routing opportunities lay. However we didn't actually climb on it because, well it looked a bit small and broken. There was a couple of amazing looking lines there and something I'd really like to go back and try (obviously I'm not going to say on here just in case the three or four people ho actually read this run and steal my line). We climbed on the left hand cliff, the one which I'd not actually taken a topo for, leaving us with our imagination about what to climb up. Firstly Soames took an easy jug pulling line, before I was allowed to be unleashed on what was to become Without Hope or Agenda (VS 4b/c). This took a line up past 2 clear pockets in the face, then taking a small overlap before running it out to the top. It was a nice little route and I didn't know it was a FA when I was on it, hence the name.
Soames then took a bit of a girdle traverse on the basis that I'd brought 60m ropes and we were going to use them! This took a great through some suspect rock which you could feel crumbling under your feet as they settled. This line went at about VS 4a/b and Soames named it Kleptomaniac. The last line was actually on the topo, but it was one that has stuck me as soon as we got down to the cliff. It was a curving line just off centre of the face. I was pretty easy and the gear was very interesting. I also pulled an old wire out of the face which was quite nice too.
The rest of the day was spent walking along cliff top following the vague descriptions in the guidebooks and searching for new lines. We found loads of cliff that wasn't actually in the guidebook and had some really trouble relating the descriptions to the actual lines that have been but up. In then end I think we gave up a little too. The cliff which looked amazing from half a km away suddenly turned out to be tiered easy slabs and I lost heart a little. Aside from this there was some really interesting ruins, standing stone, old field boundaries and a host of other oddities. If you're interested in this then here might be useful.
We did actually do another route, by the time we'd walked round to Rhoscolyn main area. We scrambled in so I could lead Truant a classic VS there, which seeps badly. Today was clearly a bad day for Truant as it was pretty much running with water but we didn't find that out till we had got down there. Instead of just scrambling back out I just took a line up the driest area of rock I could find. Soames had clearly done it before as he offered me his skyhook, knowing the protection was a little run out. I actually really climbing. It was a little run out but that didn't really matter because the climbing was so good. Belaying however was awkward to find enough decent anchors.
We then took a walk back along the coasts and cliff tops, making more of an effort to explore the cliffs. In particular we checked out a short looking red colour cliff (named "crag x") in the guidebook. This cliff had been given a particularly poor write up in the guide, but we'd decided to check it out anyway... and what a shock we were in for. It's pretty awesome as undescribed cliffs go and we'll be heading back there soon enough.
Sadly, due to my inability to remember if I've pulled the photos off my camera, I think I've lost all the pictures from that weekend.
We went armed with a small topo of the right hand crag, as this was where most of the new routing opportunities lay. However we didn't actually climb on it because, well it looked a bit small and broken. There was a couple of amazing looking lines there and something I'd really like to go back and try (obviously I'm not going to say on here just in case the three or four people ho actually read this run and steal my line). We climbed on the left hand cliff, the one which I'd not actually taken a topo for, leaving us with our imagination about what to climb up. Firstly Soames took an easy jug pulling line, before I was allowed to be unleashed on what was to become Without Hope or Agenda (VS 4b/c). This took a line up past 2 clear pockets in the face, then taking a small overlap before running it out to the top. It was a nice little route and I didn't know it was a FA when I was on it, hence the name.
Soames then took a bit of a girdle traverse on the basis that I'd brought 60m ropes and we were going to use them! This took a great through some suspect rock which you could feel crumbling under your feet as they settled. This line went at about VS 4a/b and Soames named it Kleptomaniac. The last line was actually on the topo, but it was one that has stuck me as soon as we got down to the cliff. It was a curving line just off centre of the face. I was pretty easy and the gear was very interesting. I also pulled an old wire out of the face which was quite nice too.
The rest of the day was spent walking along cliff top following the vague descriptions in the guidebooks and searching for new lines. We found loads of cliff that wasn't actually in the guidebook and had some really trouble relating the descriptions to the actual lines that have been but up. In then end I think we gave up a little too. The cliff which looked amazing from half a km away suddenly turned out to be tiered easy slabs and I lost heart a little. Aside from this there was some really interesting ruins, standing stone, old field boundaries and a host of other oddities. If you're interested in this then here might be useful.
We did actually do another route, by the time we'd walked round to Rhoscolyn main area. We scrambled in so I could lead Truant a classic VS there, which seeps badly. Today was clearly a bad day for Truant as it was pretty much running with water but we didn't find that out till we had got down there. Instead of just scrambling back out I just took a line up the driest area of rock I could find. Soames had clearly done it before as he offered me his skyhook, knowing the protection was a little run out. I actually really climbing. It was a little run out but that didn't really matter because the climbing was so good. Belaying however was awkward to find enough decent anchors.
We then took a walk back along the coasts and cliff tops, making more of an effort to explore the cliffs. In particular we checked out a short looking red colour cliff (named "crag x") in the guidebook. This cliff had been given a particularly poor write up in the guide, but we'd decided to check it out anyway... and what a shock we were in for. It's pretty awesome as undescribed cliffs go and we'll be heading back there soon enough.
Sadly, due to my inability to remember if I've pulled the photos off my camera, I think I've lost all the pictures from that weekend.
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