Nant Gwrtheyrn

Years ago Mark Dicken showed me a photo of a cliff near Nant Gwrtheyrn that he had found and thought might have some potential for DWS. It was hard to say from the photo, but it didn’t look all that good. I’d been scoping out some things around there and on the hills above Trefor having thought I’d seen some boulders in the distance, but found nothing. Around the same time I even went and had a look at Mark’s wall down near the beach at Nant, and I remember thinking I wasn’t sure whether it was steep enough for DWS. Anyway, I forgot about it again for another few years.

June this year and I was in Trefor with Pete Robins, he had an idea to check out some rock in one of the quarries around there. I mentioned that there was this wall I’d looked at years ago but that might be worth checking again. This time around, maybe because it was sunny, high tide, there was two of us and we had rock boots this time, it was clear it was going to be good. We each picked a line and abbed in to have a look. They were clearly doable, and after some chalk and cleaning we climbed a 7a and 7b+ each - the two right-hand lines. 

There looked like there could be another line to the left and Pete checked and chalked it. I also wanted to do another FA so said to Pete we paper scissor stone over it. He said best out of seven or some shit, I said best out of one, so we agreed on best of three. He won the first, and as I was getting ready for round two, he fucked off and climbed the route! Classic tactics. This turned out to be another great 7a. All three routes are perfect DWSs, above deep water – maybe even at low tide – and a good 12m high.

Some video of people climbing the three routes..