Snowdonia climbing – Llanberis Pass, Crag Ddu – Rib and Slab 79m, Vdiff

It was a warm and bright Sunday morning, but a short downpour the night before left us with a fair bit of moisture on the ground. Still recovering from my fall on Milestone Buttress the previous morning, my ribs and arm were extremely sore and as such served provided a constant, throbbing reminder of what can happen when you fall off when rock climbing. The sun appeared to be drying the rocks in the Ogwen Valley, but I still felt a little apprehension at the idea of climbing on less-than-dry rock.

David and I had elected to head down the Llanberis pass and have a crack at a medium sized VDiff. We had risen a bit late (due to being completely destroyed by Saturday’s climbing and kite surfing antics) and we had to be in Kinmel Bay for another kite surfing lesson at 2pm, so anything bigger or more difficult was out of the question. A quick look in the climbing book revealed the ideal candidate; Rib and Slab, a 79 m VDiff, divided into 2 convenient pitches and just a short 5 minute walk-in from the road – lovely!

We scrambled up to the foot of the climb which is just to the right of the black rock of Crag Ddu (the first slab on the left) on entering the Llanberis Pass from the Nant Peris end.

I always lead the first pitch, and I’m always happy to do so but this time I threw the question in just to be sure “Who’s leading first bro?”. The response was as expected “You are, as usual, get on with it”. No getting out of that one then!

The first pitch was a pretty steep 30m. The first few moves were pretty easy and I soon got that reassuring first piece of gear in. After that things started to get interesting, I found myself faced with a large block to negotiate. The block sloped to the right with a wide crack running down it, where I was able to rest my foot and place some more protection. The spot where my foot was wedged was pretty uncomfortable and I found myself feeling a bit uneasy by the time the gear was in. The block required that I climb up some very small toe ledges and move out to the right onto its arete. This part of the climb served up some of the best exposure I have experienced to date, and I felt pretty relieved to reach a small ledge on which I could traverse right to a good gear placement – whew!

From here I made my way up a steepish wall to a ledge with a Holly Tree. I chucked a sling around the trunk of the tree and clipped my rope in. There appeared to be 2 ways around the tree, one to the left which required getting wedged in a crack but had little exposure, and one to the right which meant heading out into super exposure on very small holds. After a bit of umming and ahhhing I elected to take the exposure (I hate getting wedged into cracks). I thrashed my way past the branches of the hollybush and out onto the exposed rock. A couple of moves put me onto a nice mellow ramp leading to a big tree root belay – once again…whew!

Once I had the belay set up and David had started climbing, I reflected on the pitch and how nervous I had felt (almost throughout). There had been several times where David had tried to engage me in conversation and I had ignored him completely as the climb required such intense concentration. I hoped he wouldn’t just breeze up it and tell me how easy he found it. I had a nagging suspicion that I might have just been a bit of a wimp (following my fall the previous day). I needn’t have worried, David had major problems on the exposed block. He finally appeared on the ramp after a good deal of cursing with a big smile on his face, “bloody hell, that was nippy. I was bricking it, even as a second!”

We gathered all the gear up and prepared for David’s pitch, a nice slab with small but positive holds – hmmmm, typical! David made short work of the slab until he reached the top, where it became a very steep grassy slope. Patently aware that his last piece of protection was a good 10m below he nervously edged his way up the wet, slippery grass to a belay position. I quickly followed, happy to be able to focus entirely on the moves without worrying about falling off. Once I reached the grass David instructed me to veer off to the escape to the left where I could provide a body belay for him to move across. I moved on hands and feet like Smeagol from Lord of the Rings, managing to find every warm patch of wetness within the cool grass along the way (hmmm, sheep urine – lovely).

The walk off was pretty uneventful (unlike the treacherous descent of the previous day). We made it to Kinmel Bay in plenty of time for out kite surfing lesson, just to find there was not a sniff of wind – BUGGER!