There are a few ‘three star’ lower grade climbs around North Wales that I have yet to make an ascent of. Over the years I’ve been trying to climb all such climbs as listed in my old ‘Paul Williams’ guidebook to the area, and Western Gully is one of the remaining ‘un-ticked’ routes. Having read the description from the book (which is about 25 years old at least), it doesn’t exactly sound like a three star climb – more of a vertical gardening expedition through some treacherous and rarely travelled terrain. However, my curiosity had been peaked and given the recent dry spell and rain forecast for tomorrow evening (for the first time in a month), it seemed like today was as dry as it’s ever likely to be.

I put out a last minute call, to a few friends who I knew would be up for both the challenge and adventure – an invitation that extended to only a few candidates, who were likely to have the pre-requisite skills, competence and mindset for such an undertaking! Hats off to Sam, who dropped everything to meet me at 7am the next morning to join me on a journey with an unknown outcome… Walking in, the gully is obvious (you can see it from miles around) and optimism remained high as the top looked dry enough (distant centre of photo above). However, as we got closer, it was the lower section that looked like it might give us some trouble (see photo below).

We hiked up to the base of the cliffs, known locally as ‘The Black Ladders’ below the gully. The whole set off cliffs are quite imposing and dark, and by the time we’d got to the point where a rope was going to be needed, the gully above was almost out of sight. The problem was, that between us and the big gully was a lot of steep, loose vegetated ground. Not exactly three-star stuff…

In the other direction we did at least have some nice views…

But above was a horror show of dangerous looking terrain, without any real rock climbing appeal.

Sam was up for getting us started, so we racked up and set off up a series of ledges. While the photo makes it look easy enough (if overgrown), it was much harder than anticipated, with debris, rocks, plants and dirt raining down while he forced a way up. A simple slip looked like it could happen at any point, so we retreated for another look elsewhere.

This time he took on a little gully, that was both wet and slimy. An old peg was hammered into a crack and supplemented a bit of protection, but in the end we had to concede that, even if we pushed through this area of ground, there was probably still much worse up ahead.

Having thought about this route for at least the last twenty years, and having got up at 6am and hiked 6km to reach it, I was rather reluctant to throw in the towel, but it was obvious that to continue upwards was somewhat fool hardy. Maybe we could get up it, but it all felt a bit scary and not really worth it just to put a little tick in my book! In the end it felt like a good decision to back off and walk away. My curiosity about doing the climb felt satisfied and we’d both enjoyed the catch up on the walk in.

By midday, I was back at The Cottage, where a big halo had developed around the sun, indicating the end of this fantastic spell of May weather.

I still had a few hours before Clare finished work, so decided to go an look at another crag that fits into the same category as Western Gully – The Pillar of Elidir. Also home to a couple of routes in ‘the book’ without a tick. To give my feet a rest, having already done a 12km hike with 500m of uphill, I took the bike for the first section.

It only took 30 mins to get to the top of the service road and I knew that the way down would be half that.

With just a light pack and the guidebook, I went to investigate the crag, which lies above the Marchlyn Reservoir – which looked rather low and ready for the evening’s rain!

To my surprise, there was a team climbing on the front face – home of the best rock, but harder climbing.

After a chat and watching them complete their route, I went around the pillar to check out the climbs to try and work out if it would be worth returning one day.

The rock was pretty dirty as the climbs see almost no traffic and the flakes looked a bit friable. On the slab of ‘Janos’, there probably are a few good routes, but once they’ve had a brushing as they all looked to bristle with lichens. There a actually quite a bit of rock not mentioned in my old guide, so for the brave or exploratory, there’s probably a bit still to go at.

This face leads to the top of the pillar, where you have to abseil off the far side to get down. I’m 50/50 as to whether it’s worth climbing! A cautious approach would certainly be recommended!

The whole endeavour only took a few hours, aided by the superb ride down hill, with the 3km road section taking an adrenaline inducing 11minutes to descend with top speeds reaching 45kph!

I picked up Clare on the way past The Cottage Office and we finished the day with a cooling dip in the river.

It was a super re-set after an energetic and at times frustrating, but ultimatley satisfying day. As we swam, the first drops of rain began to fall. Happily, we were tucked into The Cottage for a quiet evening in and for the first time since leaving Norway, no alarm clocks set. Tomorrow we rest…