It hasn’t rained for months, all the bogs have dried up and the bracken is only just starting to grow back – time to go stomping in search of fresh rock. Big G leads the way to a remote area high on the south eastern flank of the Glyderau:

Dear NWB.com readers,

More wonders from the Dyffryn Mymbyr.

The great sprawl of textured rocks gracing the high slopes of Clogwyn Du (gr 675 575) are defended from mass onslaught by the cruellest contours. The harsh ascent has helped maintain the mystique of the place, hitherto visited only by eccentrics such as Craine, Higginson and Dyer, to name but a few.

From the road side at gr 673 563 an unsavoury walk of 35 minutes will bring one to this place of distinct beauty, tame wheat-ears leading you from rock to rock like African honey-birds.

The path-less heathery hell is made even more problematic by the valid distraction of some lower boulders (gr 675 573 ) which sport a number of worthwhile bits and pieces in themselves.

But you must toil onwards...and even upon reaching the crag a further effort should be made to ascend the slabs on the right hand side to a secret haven of immaculate split blocks set in a bed of deep grass. Anything could happen here.

The Snowdon massif will now be a multitude of hazey silhouettes, the Gwynant lake; a mirror. Mating buzzards will interlock claws and spiral out of the blue, in reckless joy.

There are few obvious super-hard problems hereabouts, instead we have collections of clean walls, sloper traverses and innumerable finger cracks.

With its remoteness and modesty it is perhaps a place best suited to cured mountaineers taking up bouldering, or weakening boulderers with a penchant for the high places.

Leave only footprints.

Take only...the piss.

Love to all the sweaty people,

Big G

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