A cracking couple of days in Snowdonia last weekend, as James and I ticked off another four scrambles in glorious sunshine. Saturday saw us on Tryfan Bach bright and early. There’s a *** Grade 3 route up the left-hand side, and it’s a really nice way to start the day. We trudged with hundreds of other climbers up to Heather Terrace, and promptly dived off at the first opportunity up Bastow Buttress Variant (**, Grade 2/3). I led the first pitch, and the route immediately settled into a routine of “nice pitch, followed by a little bit of east heather” for the rest of it’s height. And if anyone finds size 1 and 2 nuts somewhere on the route, James would very much like them back!

The whole of Tryfan was heaving, and we legged it up the North Ridge and down to Bwlch Tryfan as quickly as possible, before heading down the Miner’s Path back to the car.

On Sunday we took advantage of the dry conditions to tackle Idwal Staircase and Continuation (**, 2). I’ve been past the bottom of this scramble often enough, as it starts right from the Cwm Idwal path. The first pitch is normally a waterfall, but even with just a trickle of actual water, it was still horrible and slippy. I don’t mind admitting that it was not enjoyable in the slightest! However, the rest of the route is brilliant! We soloed the entire thing, having not realised from the guidebook how friendly the terrain actually was. On reflection, it’s not suprising that the three guys ahead of us looked a little startled at the variety of gear we were laying out at the bottom of the first pitch!

After that we were planning to head up Senior’s Ridge to Glyder Fawr (*,1), but instead decided to tackle another ‘dry weather only’ route; Maybe Tower Rib in Cwm Cneifion (*, 2/3). I have no idea how this route got it’s name, but I enjoyed it thoroughly! Easy soloing to start, and then three ~30m pitches. James got to lead the first and last, with my doing the middle – he definitely got the best deal! I found the middle pitch weaved around a heck of a lot, and was harder to protect than the other two. But then I do worry too much, as well.

Anyway, it might be a bit of a trek to get to it, but it’s well worth doing. I’m disagreeing with Ashton and giving it two stars instead of one. The new camera again performed well, and coped with being sat on, and dropped / banged / scratched in a wide variety of different places.

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