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

Saturday 8 January 2011

Tower Gully, Tower Slabs, Hidden Gully & more...

Today I headed down into the mountains expecting to see a covering of fresh snow, but it seems that yesterdays forecasts of blizzard conditions for several hours had not come true.
Cwm Cneifion was my chosen destination & my route for the day ended up as: up East Wall Gully then up Tower Gully, down Easy Route then up Hidden Gully. Down Corner Gully then up Tower Slabs.
Once again Cwm Cneifion provided top class bomber neve & a suprising amount of fat ice. Tower Gully was in excellent nick all the way including the small ice section. Easy Gully was a pleasure to descend on top class firm snow. Hidden Gully was the 'little gem' it so often is, again full of bomber neve & ice. Corner Gully proved a good descent choice next, only slightly steeper than Easy Route, and with a slab of 7 or 8m of ice which would be fun if ascending. Last but not least Tower Slabs was in great nick, with far more ice than I had expected, with teams on it all day long.
I also went for a look at Clogwyn Righthand but it was a bit too thin in my opinion (I was soloing!)
All in all a very rewarding day!

Also Alan went up Parley fern LH today & reports 'super neve' all the way with fat ice in all the right places.
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Pic 1&2: Looking up & down Tower Gully
Pic 3&4: Looking up & down Hidden Gully
Pic 5: Looking back up Corner Gully
Pic 6: Clogwyn Du
Pic 7: Right & Lefthand
Pic 8: Tower Gully & Tower Slabs
Pic 9: First pitch of Tower Slabs (thanks to the 2 climbers who let me solo past)










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