Jake had a couple of days’ window before starting a stretch of night shifts, but the imminent arrival of Storm Floris sweeping in from the west was looking like scuppering our planned Dad and Jake trip. At the last minute, a random flutter of a butterfly’s wings nudged the projected Floris trajectory northwards – game on! A late start driving through rain and strong winds saw us hitting the north Wales coast as the storm cleared – destination Gogarth (where else!?)
No fixed plans, and with only a short evening window for a route, we remembered some unfinished business from 2019
We’d gone to do 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, an E3/4 in the Spider’s Web / Trap area, but been repulsed by a surprise bird ban. Single pitch, West facing, new territory and a chance for redemption. Just the job.
Things became a bit more complicated when we arrived at the Breakwater Quarry parking to find that Jake had forgotten his harness. Not the first instance of a key gap in the kit list – in fact we’d had to improvise on discovering an absent belay device the last time we’d parked here!
Undeterred, we set off in search of the BMC / RSPB sign that marks the way towards the rap point (or disappointment if you’re too early in the year!)
This took a while, not helped by the GR being wrong in both the definitive guide and Rockfax. Here’s a What Three Words for the large rock spike we abbed from.
///fired.replaying.grain
I was quite proud of my makeshift harness (though not quite sure why it was ME wearing it!?)
Rapping down choss to the start of some more solid rock…
… we had the chance to survey the situation. The ledge at the foot of the route was getting splashed at regular intervals (it was high tide in the 30mph wake of Floris rather than the calm low tide recommended). All a bit sploshy…
A group of rubber-necking seals were circling the foot of the route, and I could imagine them thinking: ‘Surely they’re not daft enough to come down here!’
The route looked properly steep and would require fixing gear on the way down to avoid landing in the sea. Roll in the improv harness and the cards were hardly stacked in our favour. Time for a bit of discretion and another objective!
We switched to Wen Slab for an sunset ascent, linking both main pitches in a 60m rope stretcher to avoid the faff of swapping the makeshift harness.
Made it with plenty of time to spare before the sun dipped beneath the horizon.
Privileged to have North Stack all to ourselves…
… as we watched the last sailing off to Ireland.
A bit of messaging had not one but two offers of a loan harness the next day. Big thank you to Dave T for his generosity and great to catch up for a chat. Back for a third time lucky attempt at 20,000 leagues, the tide was out and I wasn’t dangling in bits of string – a mighty relief as I twizled down to the still-sploshy stance, despite the tide being out.
Curious seals were back for more entertainment and we wondered if it was the same crew who had serenaded us from the depths of the cave when we climbed flytrap.
Jake pulled off a fine lead in somewhat smeggy conditions – the arete really is pretty steep and the crack unhelpful. I was very thankful for the return of my comfy harness. Here’s the view back to the route from the Wen promentory:
TBH you don’t get a huge amount of climbing in exchange for quite a lot of faff – it’s flattered by it’s 3*s.
We’d been gazing over at the Britomartis wall, which was new territory for Jake, and decided to give Blue Bottle, E2 5b, a go.
This shares the Britomartis start (quite exciting with the tide in above an angry sea)…
… before setting out on a huge diagonal traverse above the lip of the cave, as for Spider Wall, then continuing even further to an airy perch where Spider’s Web emerges from the depths.
The last few metres into the corner feel quite intimidating.
The guidebook description for the second pitch is confusing and the line shown on the topo is wrong. Later browsing of UKC confirmed our judgement that going direct to the looming crack in the sky is more like E4 6b, and the obvious diagonal undercling flake crack is the way to go at E2 5b. An absolute belter of a route, and a truly memorable Gogarth voyage!
RockAroundTheWorld 