It was 12 what?!

Being cheap skates amongst the many tourists pouring onto Snowdon we refused to pay £10 for the Pen Y Pass car park thus meaning we parked in a lay-by on the other side of Lliwedd. Doing this gave us an extra-long walk in requiring us to walk up to the ridge leading up to Lliwedd and go down the other side to gain access to our 12 pitch climb.

I said it 12 pitches!! Mike estimated 6 hours to do the route as the guidebook warned how easy it was to get benighted up the cliff, accidentally sleeping in squeezed our time frame slightly as we needed to walk up about 600m up and over in the valley to the base of the cliff. However we managed it getting there in the knick of time as it were (due to my extreme slowness when walking up hill whoops!).

We found the base of the route and shot up the 1st pitch easily however on the so called 2nd pitch we couldn’t identify certain features described in the guidebook therefore we abseiled back down realising we had started a little too far over and restarted. We knew we’d hit the right spot then, Mike lead the 1st and 2nd pitches in one. Doing this saved a lot of time so Mike repeated the process with the 3^rd and 4^th pitches which included a grotty wet section over a quartz lip that stumped me for a while as it was slightly overhanging so I wussed around on it for a while. Mike hard mountain man as he is (I have a theory he’s descended from mountain goats) had pretty much shot up the whole thing in his calm collected way of climbing.

The 5^th and 6^th pitches were easy grassy rocky slopes and it was here we were posed with a question, to carry on up the next 6 pitches to the top or take the scramble escape route. We decided to carry on as we’d made a bit of time clubbing the pitches together. The 7^th pitch looked tricky as Mike went up but I managed it happily enough at the this point this was the longest multi-pitch climb I’d ever done; I’ve never really suffered from vertigo but looking down from that high it was enough to make you feel a little nervous when in a seemingly precarious position. Especially when a mountain rescue helicopter was circling around and inspected us a few times. However the 8^th pitch was worth it, a really fun and interesting climb that we thoroughly enjoyed.

At this point we had 4 more pitches to do and it was getting towards dinner time, when Mike lead up he went out of sight but I knew he must have gone far because he used up the whole of the 60m rope at my feet so when I climbed up to him and he told me we had 5 metres left I was ecstatic!! The last 5m pitch at Severe was the hardest graded piece of the route but knowing we were at the top made it totally enjoyable on the tiny foot and crimpy handholds. So Mike topped out into the sun for the first time that day and I messily followed characteristically scuffing my knees and shins as I shimmied my way up.

It felt amazing to get to the top after what felt like a long time on the cliff, I could partly appreciate why all these big wall climbers spend days on end hanging off the edge of the world. That feeling at the top of achievement and relief is so great and is the main reason I haul my butt up mountains and follow Mike up these wacky routes.

That said the best feeling of all was not the success but the bag of jelly babies we had saved!! (and stealing Mike's fleece mwahahaa)

After that it was a rather sedentary plod back down the Watkin path into the gloom.

We started around half 8 and finished at half 9 so 12 pitches and 13 hours later we drove back to our viewpoint that had been designated a our sleeping spot and crawled into our sleeping bags for a well earned rest.