Classic Rock - a 30 year adventure

Despite having had a pretty long and tiring Saturday, we still had unfinished business before we could move on from the Llanberis chapter of our Classic Rock journey. On Sunday, we would have time to climb Nea on Clogwyn Y Grochan before the weather turned wet. Nea wasn’t named as a play on words, but it is just that ... near… to the roadside parking; in fact the view from the route gives you an extraordinarily detailed picture of the many different types of people visiting the pass. Cyclists struggling up and flying down, increasingly frustrated drivers pulling into the layby, moving on and then coming back again because the others were full, selfies on boulders, 35 mopeds in some kind of mod procession. You certainly don’t get that “away from it all” feeling on this crag. Pitch 1 of Nea looks grim; I doubt it ever dries out. Even so, the key foot placements seem to be on the dry patches, while you bridge over the slippery, seeping groove, all the while perfectly well protectable. An ...

Midge issues at 5:30am Of course, having a tick list shouldn’t blinker you from the other great possibilities around you. So for our next visit to The Pass, being midsummer, we planned a lengthy enchainment of crags from road to summit, incorporating 2 Classic Rock routes. The original version of the day saw a sensible breakfast time, safe in the knowledge that we could climb until 10:30pm if we needed to; no great rush. In the run up to the trip, the met office couldn’t agree for more than half a day what the weekend was going to look like, but the final forecast before Saturday looked good….. until about 3pm! Did we want to be climbing Main Wall in drizzle or even a potential thunderstorm? No, an alpine start seemed to be calling. Sleeping in the car has its downsides but a big advantage is not having to find a parking space. Others were already pulling up in the layby while we were pushing in our porridge and double brew at 4:30am. What time do you need to arrive to get a space? The...

Also known as the day the Ravens ate John's malt loaf. Out of all the classics so far, Flying Buttress in The Pass holds a strange place in my logbook. I’ve climbed the route 2.67 times and never had a dull visit; learning many lessons, making mistakes and gaining experience. The Cromlech is close enough to the road that you’d be able to see someone breaking into your car in the layby, but at the same time so remote that you’d be able to do nothing about it for an hour or two. It’s kind of a roadside crag but not a place to get caught out. In June 2004, Flying Buttress was my 6th multi-pitch lead and despite being a bit gloomy, was still a good day for climbing. Partner for the day, Hannah, was a little more experienced but we were definitely learning together and were pretty pleased with ourselves as she set up a belay at the top of pitch 3. Although a pair was ahead of us, they seemed experienced and were moving quickly.  As JG, their leader, shouted he was safe at the top of pit...

For about 12 years, a copy of the ubiquitous climbers' coffee table compilation Classic Rock has sat in our lounge, thumbed through and talked over but never seen as a tick-list. After an amazing sunny weekend in February 2019 which saw us experience 4 Classic Rock routes we realised that over that 12 years we'd inadvertently ticked off about 20 of them. It was soon suggested that since we were a quarter of the way through the book anyway, surely the obvious thing to do would be to "finish them off" and so a long-term ambition was born; a climbing partnership cemented for the long-haul. We're not the first to attempt it and we're not doing it quickly, or cycling between them or anything else that would make us unique. But we aim to finish them all at some point before we're too weak to do so. So join us on what may be a 30 year journey of snatched weekends and bits of family holidays as we experience all that Ken Wilson described as "Classic". As...