I have been lucky enough to spend another weekend up in North Wales, the original plan for the weekend was for lots of moving together in the mountains, but poor weather combined with me feeling ill meant that I ended up spending two days at Gogarth. According to both mountain forecasts, Friday was supposed to be a sunny day. However, when we woke up in the morning we discovered that the forecasts were very wrong and it was in fact raining. After breakfast in Capel Curig we headed to Castell Helen, unfortunately on the drive over I started to feel pretty sick and it didn’t go away after the walk to the crag. I decided to abseil in anyway and we climbed Blanco, which has some fantastic climbing and amazing rock formations, given my sickness and lack of energy it felt pretty hard and at the top I decided that it was best to head back. The next day was forecast to be sunny, but given the deluge which had hit the mountains the day before we decided to head back to Gogarth for some warm sunny rock. After another. Read the full article…

As a climber who claims to love sea cliff climbing, there was one major sea cliff in England & Wales where I have yet to successfully climb. About three years ago I had a bit of an epic on Main Cliff which resulted in having to abseil into the sea. It has been high on my list of destinations to return to, but it just hasn’t quite happened. Due to the weather crapping out in Snowdonia, after a brilliant day on Lliwedd we headed over to Gogarth for two days of sea cliff climbing. Day 1: Lighthouse Arete Direct, Castell Helen We had a chilled out start to the day due to having had a long day the day before, which was followed by a few whiskies due to it being my birthday. The morning was lovely in North Wales so it was a shame to have had a lie in while it was sunny, but we enjoyed a chilled out breakfast in Capel Curig before heading to Gogarth. Due to the forecast being for rain, there being strong winds at the carpark and me being a bit ill, we decided. Read the full article…

Many times while walking the classic Snowdon Horseshoe I have looked across from Crib Goch at the impressive cliffs of Lliwedd and have been drawn to them due to their scale as the shady cliffs tower above Llyn Llydaw. You don’t have to read far into the climbing at Lliwedd to realise that it is far more than a multi pitch crag, due to a combination of it’s size, the rock and it’s location in the mountains it seems to attract far more than it’s fair share of epics. I headed up to North Wales with Becky for my 25th Birthday weekend, and armed with a good forecast following a dry day we decided to head up to Lliwedd to have an adventure. Instead of opting for one of the more popular 12 pitch easy routes, we headed for a 5 pitch E1 called Terminator, followed by a 180m diff up the final arete of the face. I knew route finding was likely to be a problem at some point on the face so had planned to make sure I read the guidebook lots on the walk in while inspecting the. Read the full article…