It’s December
and I’m back in Wales after nearly three months in California. It has been a
mixed bag being back in UK, being broke and job hunting, but also brilliant to
catch up with friends and... grab a few great days of climbing on the Lleyn
too! The first was a bit of a grim day when me, Calum and Caff went to have a
look at Deep Sea Spex only to run away to Vatican Zawn. The second, me and Caff
had a go at an ambitious new line left of Vulture and the third we were back
for Deep Sea Spex.
The potential
new line is one we’d both spotted years ago and in our minds there was a corner and a steep wall on the left with reasonable
rock (which is as good as it gets) and loads of breaks for bomber cams. We
decided we’d go and check it out and walked along to try and find the abseils.
It had been years since either of us had last been down there and all we could
find were rabbit holes, so we threaded a few of these and rapped in.
After scoping
out a few possible options, we headed to the corner to have a look. It meant
doing the first pitch of Vulture as there didn’t look to be a sensible or safe
alternative. It’s about E3 5b and I had bad vibes for this pitch as last time I
did it with Nick Bullock we had a bad experience. Nick was leading and broke a
hold, he then grabbed a ledge which came away in a heap of rubble and took a
nose dive stripping a few pieces as he went. Fortunately he was fine but he
only stopped a few meters from the ground and was upside down, I won’t go into
details about the piece that held.
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| Caff spying out a line of crimps |
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| Rabbit hole abseiling, the best |
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| Questing off into the unknown |
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Caff busted it
out in no time and brought me up. He’d had a go at continuing above the belay
into the unknown, but it looked a bit sketchy and with lots of rope out and the
belay ledge below thought he’d be better off making a belay. We switched over
and so I went off up for a look above the belay. It was loose and dirty, which
is fine except that it was also steep. There were a few very old and very
corroded bolts to clip as this is also where the old aid route, Giant, goes.
This route is, or was, more or less a bolt ladder going straight through the
huge roofs above. I didn’t have a great deal of faith in these old bolts.
It became less
steep above and I eventually reached a ledge and gear, enough for a belay. It had
been fun so far and since I’d only covered about 10 metres, I thought I might
carry on. I was aiming for the big groove line and the wall beyond, the one
with all the breaks for bomber cams, except in reality there weren’t any breaks
for any cams! There was a hanging corner further up and left that I thought I
could try and get to and where there would surely be a belay. Caff had said he
didn’t think that this was very likely, but I thought he was being a
pessimistic. The climbing was good and I even did some moves that felt tricky
to reach the hanging corner. Climbing into the corner I pulled a pile of rubble
onto my leg which was painful but not serious, and I managed not to fall off.
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| Crawling out of the cliff pulling out pegs |
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| Topping out just in time |
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In hindsight, I
can see that I had gotten a bit carried away and also that there wasn’t much
chance of finding a belay in the corner. I couldn’t even find a single runner
and had managed to get pretty run out by this point. Beyond was the traverse
line we’d been eyeing up, but it looked awful, I couldn’t see any gear and the
rock didn’t look very inspiring. Also, I had already placed almost all of the
huge rack we’d carried down at the start of the pitch. I felt quite stupid for
having gotten myself into this mess and also very hot and bothered because I
was wearing too many layers and couldn’t work out any way of getting them off.
I stood in the
corner a long time, getting very tired legs, wondering what I should do and
hoping that a load of good runners would magically appear. Obviously, the only
thing I could do was climb down. I placed an offset number five sideways and
backwards into a seam to provide the illusion of a top-rope and set off down.
It wasn’t as bad as I had feared and I was ready after having done a lot of
down-climbing over the years. Back at the last good gear I brought Caff up and
suggested we get out of there via the fastest means available, which meant
doing Vulture it turned out. Caff did a huge traverse to access the top pitch,
which is where I found I had to crawl along a ledge at the end.
Will the route
go? Maybe, but I’m not sure I’d try it again. Then again I could probably be
talked into it! All in all it was a great, and fairly typically, day climbing
on the Lleyn Peninsula.
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| Caff risking life and limb to access Deep Sea Spex |
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| Placing the first runner |
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