Thursday, July 26, 2007

Alpine in Snowdonia

As we were planning on being in the Alps this week, but the weather changedour plans, Alec and I decided to squeeze a 2 day alpine climbing trip to North Wales in between more heavy rain.
We drove up yesterday morning, had a late breakfast/lunch in the cafe and then walked into Cwm Eigiau having parked at the end of the reservoir. We decided to climb Ampitheatre Buttress which is a V Diff alpine style route which had 10 guidebook pitches. We were at the foot of the route for 2:00pm and were basking in sunshine on warm dry rock for the whole route.
The buttress offers a great mix of top end scrambling, slab climbing and Alpine style gendarmes with just enough interest throughout. We had a lunch break half way up and enjoyed the views across the Conwy valley and out to sea before topping out at about 4:00pm as the first rain showers arrived.
We strolled across to the Foel Grach summit shelter where we cooked tea - army ration packs left over from a job we had done for them at Easter. As the weather closed in and the day came to a close we headed down to the bothy and curled up in front of an open fire with a bottle of scotch.
This morning was wet and windy again so I am home in the warm and dry again!

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