Friday 14 February 2014

The Pursuit of BOTM

Those of you in the know, will recognize the above acronym as the on-line journal of the Big G. Someone who's ceaseless tramping in search of unclimbed pebbles is as insatiable as it is readable, and may have influenced the monthly giveaways. This particular BOTM had me intrigued and as soon as an opportunity presented itself I found myself on a jaunt to shale city.
This was the day after storms had blacked out much of North Wales and the unceasing winter rain had saturated every inch of terra firma. So if I found dry rock, it was likely to be always so..

The storm has littered the cliff top path with sea life



Shale city comes into view


The actual zig zag path down, those following the path at the back of the zawn as per G's instructions may suffer humour failure. I reversed and approached as per the Llyn guide, using this path to climb out, rather than the Aiguille Merlot which looked tempting but deadly.

Shale city, Ugly (the central fault) is its most famous route but the area suffers from heavy seeping and leprosy.

One of G's teasers. Its gets wet. However, as Benllech has shown, this may not affect its crack climbing.

Inside the caves there are some quick drying, non seeping lines, totally nails of course, but maybe someones cup of tea.


A very hard crack line, that wasn't wet despite this round the corner..



So there it is. Don't think I'll tie on here, and I may not have found anything to magnetically draw me back. But there's a lot more to place than the publicity suggested. Come you firebrands and claim your glory.


No comments:

Post a Comment