Another long day of scrambling again today, but this time much closer to home.
While training for my MIA (Mountaineering Instructors Award), I spent many many days getting to know my way around the complex cliffs of Glyder Fach, but it's felt like a while since we'd been scrambling there. With poor weather on the way, we made the most of the current dry conditions and hiked up to the base of the cliffs in just over an hour.
The cliff was sheltered from the strong southerly winds (as we'd hoped), but the temperatures remained much colder than in the valley. I was going to be a gloves on kinda day!
It was also a good route to test out the new rucsack, which so far is performing well. At each belay, I hung it from the anchor and took out a big jacket to keep me warm while Clare led the next pitch.
The Dolmen Ridge is a classic of the area and although it's broken by a scrappy gully section, has some dramatic moments, such as traversing out along this gangway.
The clouds came and went, but mostly stayed above us.
At the top of the main ridge, we were both feeling tired and not super keen to bag a cloudy summit and subsequent ridge hike back to the valley. Instead, we turned left and dropped into Main and East Gullies, which with a bit of care took us back to the base of the cliffs.
I knew we'd have to abseil the last section, so had carried up some old rope to make an anchor. As it turned out, someone else had had the same idea recently, so I left a mallion on the two shiny new anchors.
A 25m abseil soon had us back at the bottom of the cliff.
The clouds over Tryfan were indicating high winds, so we didn't hang around for them to arrive.
We packed the climbing gear away and walked down, where we met a couple of friends who were descending from a day of running a Mountain Leader Training course. Like at the climbing wall the other day, it was nice to see some friendly faces out and about again.
- Dolmen Ridge, Grade 3*** (scramble) - plus descent of East Gully
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