Posts Tagged ‘Climbing Route’

Climbing book review: Classic Rock compiled by Ken Wilson

The laminated book of dreams! That’s the title that my brother David and I use to describe this climbing book. It’s not really laminated. We adopted the phrase coined by Bill Bailey, to describe the Argos catalogue, in a stand-up routine. We call it that because we use it like a weekend holiday brochure, to decide where our next mountain route adventure is going to be.

Snowdonia climbing – Amphitheatre Buttress 294m VD, Ogwen, North Wales

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.

Snowdonia climbing – Flying Buttress 87m VD, Dinas y Gromlech area, North Wales

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.

Nova HS 4b, Lawrencefield, Peak District

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.