By Tim Cooper

With the weather looking good for a North Wales adventure 7 intrepid GMC set forth at various times for Eric Jones campsite.

Saturday morning was bright and sunny as Liz, Claire and Martin set off to meet Tara and Paul somewhere in the Ogwen Valley to climb on Atlantic Slabs. I’m not sure if it is possible to drive any further for a climb in a Snowdonia but I’m glad to be proved wrong. They seemed to have a good time and we did not see them again until Sunday morning, they will need to explain what happened.

Amanda and I went off to do the Outside Edge Route (VD) in Cwm Sylin and we had a pleasant walking in in good sunshine until we reach the scree that was a bit of a slog. We were beaten to the climb by 6 or 7 climbers from Pembroke so we had to wait a bit and the climb was interrupted with waits every now and again. Amanda nicked all the good pitches. The coastguard helicopter buzzed us several time that was doing some sort of training over the lake, this made communication a bit difficult but it eventually went off. After topping out we ambled up to the top of Garnedd Goch where I mysteriously cut my knee. We returned to the campsite for dinner while the other rushed to the pub without touching the campsite.

Outside Edge Route

Sunday was warm and Amanda and I set of for Poor Man’s Peuterey (S 4a) on Pant Ifan and had a pleasant climb where I had the exciting middle pitch lumbering Amanda with pitches 1 and 3. Lunch was had at the bottom of the crag where we discussed our next move. We decided to go to the upper tier for some harder single pitch climbs. After a short drive into Tremadog we climbed steeply up to the crag and had a great time on K.M.A (HS 4a), Mistook (VS 4c) and Madog (VS 4c).

Mistook

We got back to the café about 4.30 to find the others having tea after a very late start and an ascent of an un-named route on Craig Bwlch y Moch.

“un-named” route

You might be wondering why this was a GMC First. The reason is that there were more female climber (4) then male climbers (3). What is the world coming to??