Craig y Castell

More rock climbing today. What's with this winter? Still in the last week I have managed to do more rock climbing then I have since September I think! So I'm not complaining.

I went down to Tremadog with Jon today, and because we didnt even have a pounds worth of shrapnel between us we couldn't park at Erics so we went to Craig y Castell instead of Bwlch y Moch as planned.

Jon loving the cold hands! Ha ha ha 

We started up 'One Step in the Crowds' (E1 5b), I've never done it before and I was feeling pretty good so just jumped on it. I've only done 1 easy short E1 at Tremadog before and have heard they are pretty hard there so have been a bit apprehensive for a while. It was fine though, there is a difficult move that feels quite committing at the second roof but it was ok. Jon screaming from cold hands then led on to the top.

Jon on Mensor

We then did 'Mensor' (VS 4c), with the aim of just going for speed. We literally did the route and were back on the ground again in about 20 minutes. I was pretty impressed. And as we had done that so fast we thought we could fit in one more route so did Niobe, because it started in the same place. Not starred or recommended though but we thought we would give it a go anyway. The first pitch was good, an apparently very awkward move until a secret hold is found (possibly drilled, its quite unusual?). We ran both pitches into 1 and the second half I went up the top pitch of Tarantula because I heard Jon at the bottom shout 'just go straight up from the tree', so I did. It was a good finish to the route, better then I expect the ungraded actual finish is.


This did finish us in an annoying spot with a short tree and gorse infested down climb to the rap point. Jon loved it! It's compulsory to do a bit of bush bashing at Tremadog though. Good day!

The joys of Tremadog bush Whacking