A Day in the Hills - Roger Dyke
By Roger Dyke
Monday 25 September 2000
Arrived at Jesse's place near Deiniolen at 11, assuming we'd go climbing in the Pass. But Jesse had more exotic stuff in mind: off via Beddgelert to Blaenau Ffestiniog.
Jesse taught me to climb 30 years ago. I still remember being woken up at crack of summer dawn, and handed a bacon butty to eat for breakfast on the pillion as we zipped up the Pass on his motorbike to knock off some long-forgotten VS then get back in time for him to take a client climbing at 10.00.
As we approached Blaenau we realised we didn't have a guidebook with us, so into town to buy one. The Tourist Office staff [of one] had taken refuge in the café across the road, due to a total absence of clients. She explained the nearest place we would get a guidebook was Betws-y-Coed. OK - Jesse can remember the routes from when he used to bring students here from the Brenin, so we don't really need one. Buy yoghurts for lunch, then off to the car park up the narrow road: "Don't leave anything in view - this is a terrible place for thieves".
"Have you got your 9mm in that sack, Rog?" "Yes." "Good." Two minutes into the walk up to the crag, I remember my camera is on the roof of the car. Jesse takes my pack and walks on. I go back, grab the camera, and chase back after him. As I leave the car park, a police car draws in and its crew start questioning everyone in sight. Pretend I haven't noticed and bash on after Jesse. Catch up with him & the 2 packs at the base of the crag. OK, so who's fit? We are at Clogwn yr Oen, and that party of 4 is on Kirkus' Climb. Eat yoghurts and gear up. "Where's your rope, Jesse?" "In the car. I one 9 will be enough." [We always seem to climb on one 9?.] We pick a line which Jesse remembers he used to take novices up sometime in the Iron Age. It looks about Diff. Jesse takes the first pitch.
At 40ft, finding an awkward move 20ft above the only gear, Jesse does a neat reverse down to the gear and I go up and lead thro. [This reverse was by far the most difficult climbing done all day.] I then spend 10 mins fixing complicated protection with a tangle of nuts, krabs, and 5mm rope which would have looked good on the wall of the Tate Modern. It stays there while I make the move, then potter gently onward to a belay.
Jesse leads again, then I lead thro to a long ledge. The rock above is uninviting. Jesse walks off along the ledge to an obvious short corner and goes up it - to find a large slab with no possibility of protection in sight for a long way. He comes back, I go and look. Yes, exactly. What's more, it looks like we are about to have rain?. Good spikes around, so we will ab off: we're not proud. Doubled rope reaches down to?.nowhere useful.
Never mind, single it reaches to a point easily scrambled to from the ground. So we can just catch the party of 4 and ask them to lend us one of their ropes, by tying it to the end of ours. [We are definitely not proud, especially when it is about to rain.] "Good thinking" says Jesse "only one problem - they left while you were up there looking at the slab"
Ah well? the ledge we are on ramps down to the left, and then there is an easy scramble down to within a doubled-rope's length of the ground rising from the right. This is the way.
The only abseil point is a 15 inch wide, 3ft long finger of rock projecting over a vertical couloir which in Yorkshire would pass as a pit-shaft. The finger is accessible only from above. Jesse skilfully demonstrates how you can stand on the finger to put your figure-of-8 onto the rope, hang on to the tail of the rope with one hand, and lower yourself by the other hand over the side of the finger and go smoothly into the abseil. He vanishes down the pit-shaft. We check the rope will retrieve OK.
The rain starts, and I realise I have not abb'ed since I was climbing on Peak limestone years ago with Andrew Marsh - and he had to give me a top-rope then. The opening sentence of "Cooking at Sea" should have come to mind:- "If you are not already a proficient cook, at sea in a small boat in rough weather is no place to start learning." Pull Jesse's 8 up on the rope, rig it and triple check. Tighten helmet strap and assure myself that as long as I don't let go the tail of the rope, nothing can go spectacularly wrong. As long as the rope stays on the finger. "Are you OK up there?" "Yes, fine." I don't convince myself, still less Jesse apparently, as I notice him retreating yet further back from the line of fire. Try to remember how he lowered off so smoothly. Slide over side of damp rock finger: this would be difficult to do elegantly with both hands?. Whump. Not sure what happened, but I am now in standard free abseil position and can glide down gracefully, pretending I take this sort of thing in my stride.
Get home to find Sheena's email telling me I have been elected a Full Member. Are Full Members - even those over 60 - allowed such magnificently unsuccessful expeditions, on climbs that the rest of the Club would solo up to get to the start of the real route?
[Delving later into Ron James' super 1970 book indicated the route was probably Chic - a VDiff no less!]
