Thursday, July 17, 2008

Plan B

Well in the end we went for Plan B and had a few days in North Wales. The weather was largely kind to us and on the one day that we got godawful weather we just went and paid homage to Parisellas or as it is better known "The Cave of Justice" - a subject that I will deal with in another post.

What was most enlightening about Wales was that there is some many different sorts of rock to climb on - in the course of 5 days we climbed on Rhyolitic Tuff, Limestone, Slate, Rhyolitic Tuff\Breccia and finally Quartzite and we never got near the Basalt, Rhyolite or Dolorite that are in the Pass somewhere. The downside such as it is of having all these different rock types is that you have to figure out how to climb on them and how they can be protected to the best advantage but it is a wonderful journey of discovery and one that I wll have to go back and explore on more detail over the summer assuming of course that it ever arrives...

Of all the routes that we did the most memorable would have to be Tennis Shoe - the first and last pitches are as polished as the guide makes out but between those you have the most amazing slab that it's impossible to make a hard move on even if you decide to miss out all of the decent holds. Just keep climbing and throw in the odd piece of gear until you get to the end of the rope then build a belay and repeat.

No comments: