The July Crisis

Following such a good day yesterday on the Trinities Torquil and myself decided to head up to the Black Ladders and get on some mixed ground when there is not a great deal of snow around but the turf is fairly well frozen. On reaching the ladders I was amazed that Ice Fall Gully Left hand is still in good climbable condition, and so is Eastern Gully bottom pitch! These routes must be the most thaw resilient routes ever! I climbed them both during the last thaw too when there was probably no other route going in Wales, but this thaw has been much warmer and over twice as long.

There were 3 teams above us when we reached the kit up rock. And by the time we got up the neve slope to the real base of the routes, we noticed another 8 or 9 people behind us that had sprang from nowhere! Well they probably didn't really but we hadn't turned round for the past hour and a bit on the walk in. Sneaky buggers.

Torquil and the impossible central gully cave

We decided to do 'The July Crisis', a turf based route with no description of needing ice, so sounded good as there was not much ice about. It goes up Central Gully to above the cave pitch. The cave pitch was mental! We kitted up with the intention to do it but it wasn't going to happen. It must be a M6/7 pitch on the left of it in the condition it was in today. I have done it before and it was hard, but today must have been impossible to mere mortals like us. So we skirted left, and went wrong, going up something hard and steep.

Me on the first proper pitch (photo: Torquil)

'The July Crisis' (photo: Huw Gilbert)

With a few route finding problems, trying to find the 'first weakness on the right', we just quested up what we thought might be the route. it looked really hard, but we gave it a go. It was hard, but not too hard. And we found a sling on it so assume it was the route.

Torquil leading the top pitch

By the time Torquil was leading the second pitch things started to match the description. The route was brilliant, quite awkward techy climbing, well protected, with continual interest for about 70m. In comparison to the relatively few grade 5 pitches I have done, I did think it to be more difficult then most.

We made it our mission to get back to the car just in time to not need lights, which we just managed, and then over to a friends for some tea and amazing scones. What a day!