Wales - 2013
17 December 2013 ........... Tryfan north ridge - take 2
Another shot at the north ridge of Tryfan - it went well, much better than my first trip.
The purpose of the trip was to see if it is possible to get up the north ridge without having to tackle the scary stuff I met last time.
And I have to say, yes it is - just about.
There is a path, or to be more accurate, there are paths - that`s part of the problem - the path is constantly dividing, and going off it two different directions.
So you take one direction, and end up looking down a precipice.
Or you end up staring at a rock wall, and shaking your head in disbelief - that can`t be a grade 1 scramble !
So it takes a lot of attention to where the path is taking you.
Sometimes the path goes off in quite the wrong direction, and you think it is another dead end, then it turns up some hidden semi-gully you would never have known was there, and you have just bypassed some unclimbable rock wall.
A useful thing to look out for are the crampon scratches - they tend to indicate the easiest route up.
Part of the way up, and the path goes quite close to one of the features of the north ridge - The Cannon.
It is a large spike of rock that sticks up and out over the west face of Tryfan.
I could of course have climbed up it, but then I wouldn`t have been able to take a picture of me on it, so there wasn`t any point.
Further up, and you come to quite large flat area, and in front of you is a wall of big broken chunks of rock.
I had a brief conversation with somebody at the bottom, and he said it was rated as a grade 1 scramble, but that there is a hard move somewhere higher up.
Digging around on the internet, the majority of people commenting on it reckon it is harder than a grade 1 scramble, but maybe not grade 2 - the concensus seems to be somewhere around a grade 1.5 scramble, or sometimes written as 1/2, which is a bit confusing as that looks like a half.
It didn`t look so intimidating to me on this occasion, and I was somewhat tempted to try it.
However the purpose of the trip was to find an easy way up the north ridge, so I gave it a miss.
Here is a picture of it taken from the flat area at the base - I actually took this picture on my first trip up the north ridge, not on this trip - which explains the snow at the bottom.
In the picture it looks okay, but I am looking up at it, so this will have the effect of flattening the steepness of it.
You also don`t get an idea of the size of it - but right up at the top of the wall there are two climbers, which may convey a sense of scale.
It looks a lot more scary when you are standing at the bottom of it !
The path heads off to the east side of this wall, and I reckon that it is here that the scrambling starts to move up a bit in difficulty.
The path flanks round the east side of Tryfan, and eventually you come to what might be a way up to the crest of the ridge above the wall.
It is a rather wet looking gully, with a large overhanging rock right at the bottom - if you get past that, the rest of it might be a bit easier.
However I continued to try to follow the path, and eventually the path turns upwards - it is easy to loose the path and start to climb up, then realise you are stuck, and the path is three or four metres below you.
It was a bit of a struggle getting back down again.
The path continues upwards, getting steeper - and I think that this is now the most difficult bit of scrambling that the path takes you up.
However eventually it takes you up onto the crest of the ridge just below the north summit of Tryfan, crosses over the crest, then round the north summit, and down to the coll between the two summits.
Then it is a straightforward scramble up the path onto the proper summit.
There is another way up past the wall and the north peak - it is the route I followed quite by chance when I first climbed the north ridge, which is why I know about it.
Instead of following the path up as just described, contour further round the east face, and you come to a narrow gully that takes you straight up to the coll between the two summits.
I wouldn`t say it is any easier, there is quite a tricky bit immediately below a big boulder jammed across the gully. There may be other tricky bits, at this point I can`t remember.
By the time I got to the summit it was in cloud, with a wicked wind, so once again I sheltered below Adam or Eve for a quick lunch stop.
I would have had enough daylight left to head off down the south ridge, and go and maybe have a look at, but not ascend, Bristly Ridge - it is rated as a grade 1 scramble, but I believe it is quite committing.
However the weather was getting worse as the next front was arriving, and the other thing that was happening was that the cloud was condensing on the rocks and freezing, so the rocks had a thin film of ice on them.
They looked quite dry, but were actually getting a bit slippy.
So I headed down the same scree gully that I had gone up and down at the top of the west face that I had done on my last trip to Tryfan, and back down to the road. It is a lot quicker than going down the south ridge, and then coming all the way back round.
On the way down, I eventually cleared the cloud, so took these pictures.
Glyder Fâch and Glyder Mawr had dense cloud on them all day - but Y Garn was just about clear all day.
Here are Glyder Mawr and Y Garn -
A bit further round, and there are just some light wisps of cloud all the way down the ridge.
Finally, a rather uninspiring picture of Pen yr Ole Wen and Carnedd Dafydd.
The day was definitely a success - I am now quite satisfied that you can get up the north ridge of Tryfan with a level of difficulty which I feel is what a grade 1 scramble should be like.
But whether the route I took is the route that is rated as a grade 1 scramble I don`t know - maybe the grade 1 scramble route includes the wall.
Sometime I will have a go at the wall, and see how I get on with that.
So I`m still not sure if I have got a proper understanding of what a grade 1 scramble is like.
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