Above: Me leading pitch 1Today Matt and I walked up to Craid Y Rhaeadr to vae a look at Central Icefall Direct VI, 6***. This massive Icefall links 2 impressive pillers up the centre of the 100m wall. Having never climbed a winter routes in Wales, I was mega psyched to tick this one and be the first ones up. I led off up the first steep grade 5.5 pitch, which offered sustained climbing for 30m. Matt then dispatched the second pitch swiftly. This 35m grade 6 pitch offered some outstanding steep climbing up the central piller in an outstanding position. The crux of the route today was the final piller/icicle. This gave some extremely steep climbing, which was overhanging to start and very pumpy. Although there were good placements to be had, The way it had formed made it very hard for the feet. Thankfully, this only lasted for around 4m. A truely amazing route. Another team was starting as we came back down.
Above and Below: Matt Leading pitch 2
Below: Me following pitch 2
Above: Me on pitch 3We walked out and headed for Ogwen hoping to find the Devil's Appendix in. Despite the massive amount of ice around, it still had not touched down. With every route having teams on it, we headed for the Sting. Graded IV/V in the old guide, Baggy suggested that it could be worth VI,6. It does not come in that often, but was looking pretty fat as we walked up, with a team picking their way up it. After hanging around the bottom for a while and armed with Mark Walker's suggested grade of VI, Matt started off. The ice was a bit brittle and shandleery (if that's a word or even spent right), steep and quite sustained. We both thought that it was well worth VI, 6.
A great day, 2 routes in 2 valleys.
3 comments:
i dont think its a work, but if it was it would be spelt "Chandeliery",
just thought id add that :-)
A work? At least it's only my spelling.
Nice ticks, but you need to do at least 3 Welsh walkins a day to equal 1 Scottish one! (Don't look at my blog to see how little I've been walking the past few days)
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