TOO often the climber dances to the guide-book’s tune and the day becomes an inexorable progression from pitch to pitch. So that on our first visit to Clogwyn du’r Arddu it seemed right that the day should be memorably enlivened by divers strange and diabolical incidents. The proper introduction to the cliff was rumoured to be Longland’s, which made one good argument against the idea. Something about the same standard and half as long again drew us, with a sneaking feeling of presumption, up the Western Terrace, where the Great Slab entry ought to be.
Access to a main groove and the grass Caterpillar is made via a short slab which is traversed low, then crossed diagonally up to the left. Jim belayed while I started off, exploratory-like, in socks, on to the slab, then at once the holds faded. A promising pinch- hold was carefully dried with a handkerchief, improving it from the wet to the merely slimy. Various combinations of knight’s moves followed, and failed. The book said something about "reach an asset here." "Stupid remark when there’s nothing to reach for." Jim joined the fray and the next quarter of an hour was spent roaming over his head and shoulders, working up hate for that slab. During a rare sally on to the rock, and for exercise rather than in hope, I tried going straight up a few feet to the top of the slab where it met a minor overhang. The holds soon petered out again on the left, but they held the germ of an idea, an idea quite as dastardly in concept as that of Morley Wood’s inserted chockstones. One flaky hold took line: by threading the rope through a sling and pulling on the double rope, one might swing across far enough to reach definite holds. Besides, surely other people didn’t take forty minutes over this move’?
It worked, of course, though hardly part of the British repertory, and Great Slab appeared to suffer the insult without reproach on that pitch. At eighty feet there was a spike graced with a stance of the glorious-out-of-balance kind. It seemed simpler and more traditional to leave a running belay and take out the full hundred and thirty feet. It must remain a trade secret how this pitch was done on a 120 ft. rope; but then nylon is strangely elastic stuff. Presumably it was the reaction of the mind to the initial delay which persuaded such an unreasonable decision. But we still thought that the best answer would be not to stop, but to take a longer rope. At the top was the cave – a typical Clogwyn grotto, miniature, but very hospitable. Jim, in rope-soles, appeared to float up, laden with my boots, unable to use the rope swing, and actually tugged back by the action of the initial runner. We looked up at the sweep of Bow-Shaped Slab above, looked away again, and Jim smoked a cigarette. At that point we noticed the creature that was to give us so much enjoyment; on the far side of the llyn, a quarter of a mile away and below, a pair ol gangling human legs lay stretched out beside a boulder, with no sign of the parent body. Then mist floated across the cwm, hiding this impressive Spartan from us.
Afterwards, one could reflect how individual each pitch had been. The first for length and time, averaging just two minutes for each yard. The next was remarkable for its stance. Round the corner from the cave one went easily up the edge to a superb position on the slab, both feet squashed on a sod with a high frequency oscillation. Cloud had swirled down on the cliff, and from this unique anchorage one may savour to the full the bracing air of the valley – at least until the second arrives to elbow you off. The traverse across to the pastures didn’t seem too difficult; more of an exercise in jockeying oneself into position, but the pitch was made memorable by the move up on to the Field. The exploring hand entered a burrow-like cavity, squeezed through topsoil and subsoil and mud to reach and pull up on a knob of rock some fifteen inches down the hole. A fine, rabbity, route-finding move on a typically interesting Menlove pitch. We breasted the furrows to find an enormous flake belay from which someone had thoughtfully chipped away the sharp edge at one point.
The abominable yeti now seemed to be somewhere below on the screes, for the air was suddenly alive with whistling. We couldn’t signify that we had heard as there was no loose rock within reach, so turned to the last major difficulty, the little forty foot corner. The slab continues up, at a fairly easy angle, with the corner on the right formed by the wall of Central Rib. At twenty feet the wall bulges to the left, pushing one out on to the slab. And, as ever apparently, oozing with water. OE came the boots again. Fifteen up a spike on the right wall took a runner: then a curious leftward move on to a flake, first for a hand, then as foothold. This is painful for stockings, fortunately, so one isn’t enjoined to dally before lunging for a few quartz excrescences. The carpet-roll grass is sorely missed here, but at this point the bulge of the right wall lies back and the corner turns into an easy groove, where all those with any sense of gratitude will jam with thanks. In this position, soaking up water like a piece of damp blotting-paper, I supposed only my nether reaches were visible from below, for these horrifying sounds smote the silence:
"Are you laybacking?" " NO!"
"What’s it like – desperate?" "H’m... rather."
With a few such terse, well-chosen phrases, etc. But it was a poor effort; any wide awake leader, thinking entirely of his second, would have risen to the occasion and returned quite different answers to such inquiries. Jim came up again like the proverbial bomb, though some low growls did rumble up from below the bulge. However, we were to be spared nothing; for a shout, thin but plaintive, floated up to us: "Where are you going?" It was a remarkable example of curiosity under trying conditions, yet it drew from us not an intelligent reply, but hysterical laughter which put further climbing out of the question for some minutes. Who was this fearless denizen of the cwm? A humorous peasant, possibly a lonely scion of the Headlongs, or a mere Llanberis tribesman? The truth will never be known, for after that single wild cry the creature was neither seen nor heard again.
Now the guide-book got quite blasé; "280 ft. The difficulty is now over. Beautiful slab climbing in fine position." Yet it felt only then that we were on Great Slab at last, with its impressive width and sweep. Photographs seem to belie the scale of the cliff, perhaps because, taken from a distance it is difficult to introduce any object of comparison. Despite what one says when on it, it is a magnificent face, and beautiful in form; the lines of both but- tresses are asymmetrical, yet perfect in balance, their length accentuated by each one’s single characteristic of fierceness or grandeur.
A lot of rope would be useful on these last pitches to avoid long searches for belays. One can only speculate on what future generations will use when the quartz spillikins and grass tufts have gone. ’Then, abruptly, we were up, peering on to the top of Narrow, and to increase our delight, with the sun breaking through a lifting cloudbank. Beyond the summit, in the west, Quellyn and the smaller lakes gleamed, burnished to silver in the evening light: a finale to match the day.