Monday 30 May 2011

FairHead.



Sheltering from the strong winds and rain at the top of the crag.


Keith looking unimpressed with the windy conditions.

I am just back from a trip to Fairhead in Northern Ireland. Fairhead is an amazing crag, about 60m high made of top quality Dolorite. Unfortunatley the weather was pretty epic with high winds and frequent rain. Despite the conditions we got climbing everyday.  We were a team of 10, and between us we climbed about 150 picthes ranging from HVS to E7 during the week that we were there.

Finally getting some climbing done. Myself on the superb Face Value E4.

A trip report (written by someone who obvioulsy has more time than me) can be found under the latest news section at http://www.fairheadclimbers.com/ and more photos can be seen at https://picasaweb.google.com/115022919213251550475/FairHead?feat=email


 

Wednesday 11 May 2011

The Promised Land?

 The view from the Barrel boulder across the Llanberis Pass to Dinas Cromlech.

Lower Pen Trwyn, home to some fine sports routes of various grades.

For the past month or so I have been living and working in North Wales. I seem to have been pretty busy, working, and bouldering or doing routes in the evenings and on my days off, hence the lack of blog updates. Despite spending all spare time climbing, I only seem to have got up one decent route which was Citadel, a big E5 at the main cliff on Gogarth. Even this was slightly tainted by the fact that due to a small navigational error we climbed the top second pitch of Graduation Cermony instead, thus accidently missing the Citadel crack, supposedly one of the finest pitches at Gogarth.  Sports climbing and boudering wise I have come close to a couple of reasonable routes/problems, but not quite suceeded yet.
However, there is plenty of time left this summer, so hopefully I will have a bit more to report/discuss next time I blog.