I was heading over to the Rucksack Club hut in The Pass for Steve’s Beudy meet and I teamed up with George who was up for a day-trip. “How about checking out Harold’s new crag in Ogwen? I’ll pick you up at 9.” Confident in George’s judgement I was happy to sign up for this magical mystery tour without further details – I just packed for all eventualities and awaited my chauffeur.

“Harold” turned out to be Harold Walmsley (who I’d never actually met despite having many friends in common) and “Harold’s Crag” was Carreg Fran Isaf, (re)discovered by Harold a couple of years ago and developed with a huge amount of effort and dedication since. He’s published a great mini guide here

Harold’s guide gives extremely detailed approach and route descriptions, so there’s no need to elaborate here. Suffice to say the crag is an obvious 80m band of white rock near the crest of the ridge on the flanks of Pen yr Ole Wen, way above the Sheep Pen boulders and immediately opposite the slabs of Carnedd Y Filiast.

Happily our itinerary also included picking Harold up on the way, for a day’s route cleaning, so we’d have the advantage of a guide for the approach, detailed route beta, and of course good banter.

Although the crag is immediately above the A5, a direct approach would involve about 600m of vertical scree and heather bashing. Instead, a looping route gains height gently and brings you to the top of the crag in about 90 minutes:

From the gearing up spot, a feint path leads down…

… to a very solid ab point…

… from which a 30m ab gets you to further scrambling down and leftwards (looking out) to the foot of the routes. The terrain isn’t for the feint hearted, though it’s reasonably straightforward, and the paradise of heather and bilberries is worth the effort alone!

Down to business – our prime objective was Motivation, an 80m two – pitch E3 5c. George baggsied the first 40m pitch which takes the obvious imposing crack line through two bands of overhangs. Well protected, and with plenty of opportunity for bridging, the crux is a thrilling layback move for a down-pointing spike at the top bulge.

I got the 2nd pitch, something of a contrast with an initial steep wall protected by just a couple of tiny wires (happily the holds are better than they look) followed by a baffling pull onto an angled ramp, and off it again, with decent gear well beneath foot level. Not hard for 5c but quite harrowing and not somewhere you’d want to take a tumble. We thought E2/3 and well worth 2 or 3 stars.

Heading back to the abseil we caught up with Harold, hard at work on his next project. To say he’s put a lot of work into cleaning the routes and developing the crag would be a massive understatement – this would be his 43rd visit (each involving a 3-hour round trip, not to mention a few hours hard labour with trowel, brushes and other implements of the trade) which have so far yielded 7 routes. Certainly the two we did were fully formed classics, and not those routes that “might be decent once they’ve settled down a bit”.

Back down for a second installment, our host recommended Papillon, E1 5b/c. This takes the first line on the sweeping slabs starting down and right from Motivation (and visible in the crag overview shot above) The main pitch is almost a full rope length and a real tour de force. Two well-protected cruxes appear at the start (a stiff pull through a small roof on excellent finger locks) and the end (an exciting flake crack). The intervening 30m of slab climbing looks quite intimidating and blank from below but actually yields numerous surprising holds and enough gear for you to enjoy them, and the friction is superb.

The second pitch pieces together the best of the remaining rock, but is really only a way off in comparison (though hard won with major excavations to unearth it!) Here’s George topping out on pitch 2

… and on the top-out with a stunning backdrop of The Glyders and Cwm Idwal.

Fab day – topped off with a sumptuous meal with great company around the dining table at Beudy (thanks Steve!)

That completed a superb mountain day – and our host later revealed that we’d made only the 4th ascent of Meditation and the 2nd one of Pappilon. Another testament to Harold’s labours as you’d imagine they’d have needed much more traffic to “scrub up” into two such solid, clean lines – both deserving of two or three stars and well worth seeking out (ascents #5 and #3 respectively await you – get up there!)