ron-t climbing
23 February 2018 ................ The Devil`s Kitchen and Y garn
The continuing spell of cold and clear weather persuaded me it was time for me go and see if I could get up Sheep Walk, and then do a tour over Y Garn.
And whilst I was up at the head of Llyn Idwal, I also wanted to have a look at the Devil`s Kitchen itself, and see if I could find the hole in the cliffs that I had seen from the path down beside Llyn Idwal on a previous trip.
Heading up the path towards Llyn Idwal, and Y Garn was presenting a super view looking into Cwm Clyd - it looks like a good horseshoe in itself, without taking in any other peaks.
In his guidebook, Steve Ashton describes the ascent of the east ridge as a grade 2 scramble, his guidebook has some excellent information in it, but one of the problems of his guidebook is that you can`t always tell if the route he is describing is the easiest way up, or he is selecting the route to maximise the difficulty, and an easier route lies not far away. So I am not sure how I would get on with it.
The other thing that is worth noting in the photograph is the snow cornice right along the top edge of the northeast ridge, as that top edge is the route of the main path up and down from Y Garn - more on this later.
There was also a good view looking across to Foel-goch and Carnedd y Filiast -
Well up above Llyn Idwal now, and a good view down to the Idwal Slabs, and some other grade 2 scrambling routes up on to Seniors Ridge -
Directly above the Idwal Slabs in the above picture, and in the sunshine that is lighting up Y Gribin is a view of the Cneifion Arête - here is a closer view of it -
A good view looking back at where I had come from, looking down the length of Llyn Idwal and across to Pen yr Ole Wen -
Time to go and see if I could find the hole along from the Devil`s Kitchen that I have seen on previous trips in this area - I had a quite unpleasant sort of contour along the side of the quite steep slope below the crags, and I just couldn`t find it but I did find quite an impressive frozen waterfall - I don`t think there is enough ice on it to be any use for climbing, but it is quite an impressive sight all the same -
Heading back along the bottom of the crags, and then I saw the hole - it was a pretty messy scramble up to it, and an even more messy scramble back down, but I did actually get up to it.
And I can say without any shadow of doubt that it wasn`t worth the effort - it is just a sort of recess with a steeply sloping floor that was full of snow.
I can cross that one off my to-do list !
Back along the bottom of the crags, across the path, and up towards the actual Devil`s Kitchen - and on the way I found a quite a good cave - it goes quite far in, if you can put up with all the goat poo -
Now for some reason I had always thought that the Devil`s Kitchen was some sort of chimney, as that is the impression of it that you get from various descriptions.
However it isn`t, it is a deep slot, and the way up to it is over big boulders - I didn`t go right up to it, this was as far as I went -
I sat there for a brief stop-over for a late lunch, and I got a visitor, who flew around for a while, then purposefully landed about 10 or 15 metres away - is it a Chough, it croaked at me a few times to make sure I knew it was there, and I think it would have been bigger than a crow.
Eventually it decided I wasn`t going to share my cheese sandwich with it, and it flew away. I believe they are relatively rare, but the North Wales coast is one of their known habitats.
Now things began to go downhill - getting to the bottom of Sheep Walk is anything but a walk, it is quite a struggle up a rocky grassy slope to get to it.
And when I got up to it, the green slope of Sheep Walk was covered in névé, so I wasn`t going to be walking up it.
So what to do - I could put on my crampons, and walk or rather climb up the névé - but by now time was fairly pushing on, and to put on my crampons would take 20 minutes or so. Then I would have to take them off again at the top, another 15 minutes or so.
Or I could climb up the edge of Sheep Walk where there wasn`t any névé.
And that is what I did - it sounds a bit dodgy climbing up the edge, but it wasn`t, there was plenty of width, and it gradually got wider.
The higher up I got the larger the areas of névé, so I gradually got pushed further and further away from Sheep Walk, and really ended up climbing up the sort of ridge or buttress between Sheep Walk and the gully I climbed down some time ago.
It wasn`t a lot of fun as a climb, but I eventually got up on to the flatter area between Glyder Fawr and Y Garn.
So I still haven`t gone either up or down Sheep Walk, which is a bit disappointing.
Heading up to the summit of Y Garn, and some good evidence of splitting in the cornices -
Up on the summit of Y Garn, and the east wind was taking no prisoners, it was vicious, so I just grabbed some pictures and fled, I didn`t have time to hang about anyway.
Looking across to the Glyders -
Looking across to Snowdon -
Looking south away down towards the Lleyn Peninsula - and just look at all that atmospheric pollution lying in the valleys - I guess it was coming from the heavily industrialised areas all around Manchester and Birmingham -
Looking away to the north past Foel-goch and Carnedd y Filiast -
And so down to the northeast ridge, and the main path down to the real world again.
The cornice that you could see in the first picture was a bit of a problem, it was a substantial bit of névé - however there were deep footprints in it that were made when the snow was still powder, so they provided a series of steps all the way, and I got through it safely without having to put on my crampons.
The conditions up on the higher levels are quite deceptive just now - you look across to a mountain and 99% of it is clear of snow, so you reckon you will not have any problem - but then when you are up there you come across a stretch of névé which is completely blocking your path, and it could be fatal to try and negotiate it without the use of crampons or ice axe.
The other thing that is going to happen soon is when more snow lands on the existing quite polished névé - not only is it going to hide the névé so you don`t know it is there, but the avalanche risk is going to be high.
That cornice on the upper edge of the north east ridge of Y Garn is going to become quite deadly when the new snow arrives.
Well down the path now towards Llyn Idwal, and Tryfan was rather nicely catching the diffuse late afternoon sunshine -
Y Gribin was also catching a bit of the sunshine - the upper slopes above Cwm Cneifion still have a fair bit of névé on them - it looks as if it could have a high risk of avalanches after new snow, but in the meantime would have provided some good winter climbing -
And so on down to Llwn Idwal, and back to the real world.
I do wonder if I made a big mistake at the bottom of Sheep Walk - should I have put on my crampons and walked - or rather climbed - up all the névé, taken my time, and forgotten about going on up to the summit of Y Garn - you can climb Y Garn anytime, but the kind of névé that is up there just now is quite rare.
I could have easily have turned left at the top of Sheep Walk and then come back down the main path past the Devil`s Kitchen.
But I didn`t, and I can`t go back in time, so there it is - and it is so satisfying getting up to a summit, so it certainly wasn`t a wasted day.
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