The purpose of this blog is to report on winter climbing conditions in Snowdonia, to keep you lot who like nothing better than climbing ice, snow, frozen turf etc in ridiculously low temps informed!! As well as it being a record of some of my own winter climbing adventures. Feel free to email me any of your own conditions reports & photos you have & I will post them here. The more info on winter conditions the better! email:
andymountains@googlemail.com

Thursday 18 March 2010

Tower Slabs refusing to let go! (by Carl)

Had an email just now which read the following:
Hi Andy,

After a couple of days back at work to discover the fishing is just as bad as it was a month ago and strong wind forcast I had another day off. Couldn't resist a swift wander into Cneifion. I picked up one axe but went back in the house to get the other one, just in case! 14 degrees in the valley but I could see that big fat ice on the last pitch of left hand on the drive in, so I thought maybe a chance of something on Tower Slabs. Amazed to see its still hanging on, so trudged up through soft snow, but not up to your knees soft. The first pitch was pretty good, and there's bits above there too. The ice is soft but that did make for great placements. Water is running behind so I don't suppose it'll survive the weekend. There was bits falling off left hand across the cwm. The top half of it is still there but there was a stream running over the bottom half. Right hand also pretty stripped as per photo. Very windy at top where it was a little depressing to see plenty of rock and turf uncovered. Made a quick exit down Gribin as it started to rain. I did feel a bit of a muppet making my way to the car in rain with two axes on my back!

Carl

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