Lliwedd climbing

Peak/Crag: Lliwedd East Buttress
Routes: Avalanche (VD: led p.1,3,5), Red Wall (HVD: led p.2), Longland's Continuation (HVD: led p.2)
The classic combination up Lliwedd's long East Buttress, and a glaring gap in my climbing CV for 25 years. It is essentially a 9 or 10 pitch (almost 300m) continuous slice of mountaineering: very few technical moves, but a great deal of route-finding, awkward rock and nice situations. A week of warm dry sunshine made the big, high cliffs almost compulsory: the ideal Lliwedd conditions. I drove down to Mymbyr to avoid the ludicrous fees of PyP, which was probably full anyway, and ran from the valley up past Pen y Gwryd to rejoin Vic and the sacs at the Pass: a nice loosener after last evening's race. The walk-in was a delight, warm breezes and fantastic clarity of light: Lliwedd's buttresses lit to perfection by the morning sun. It did take us the allotted hour, mind, so I pushed on up the first pitch - which is a pleasant groove allowing us to get reacquainted with Lliwedd's characteristic pinch and sloping holds. This took us into the shadows at the end of the Heather Shelf, and Vic then merged the enjoyable long rising traverse to easy slabs. This gave me the Quartz Wall, which gives a few brief awkward moves over blocky quartz to move right into a short groove. I belayed on the rib. Then came the first route-finding challenge: I had only bought a vague and inadequate topo by way of 'Alpine Training', as Lliwedd is notorious for its complexity and tricky navigation. As a result, Vic continued up the vegetated and loose groove - not very pleasant - up to a steeper wall. I followed through, easy scrambling, up to the Great Terrace and the end of Avalanche. The first pitch of Red Wall gives good climbing, up a groove to a steepening, then nice moves on good solid rock to gain a rib on the right. Great atmosphere above the terrace and shallow gully: the complexity and scale of the cliff very apparent at this point. The topo was virtually useless up here, so I continued (wrongly I suspect) up an obvious slab which gave slightly precarious climbing up dirty cracks and suspect flakes, vegetated in places, and meant I had to go above the Green Gallery to get a decent belay. A nice section of rock lies above, and Longland's Continuation is far more solid and very atmospheric high up on the crag: Vic led up a slab to a good clean rib and a series of easy cracks. This gave me the delightful final 40ft slab, the technical crux of the entire route at 4b, but very short-lived. It has the virtue of finishing on the sunny summit, and was a great way to finish. A long but beautifully sunny descent, and I ran from PyP back to the car in Mymbyr.