x1.jpg)
Terry Gifford on pitch two.Original image-Ian Smith/CC
The place possesses a distinct allure: nowhere in
Wales could a more confused and romantically sculptured disarray of rock be
found; loose it may be, but like many a loose climb it scarcely lacks
character or attraction. Typical journey into Wales, away from the coastal
sands towards the hills to the west of Snowdon and under threats of rain down
the valley towards Nantlle, above which, on Craig y Bera, hangs a neglected gem
of a route, Angel Pavement.
It was 13 years since my only ascent of it. As the
years have passed, that climb has glowed with memories of delicate moves,
serious situations and of the old team I used to climb with.Now, as I saw with relief that the heavy wet clouds
seemed to rest just on the top of the route, I remembered that clear spring
weather when we burst out of Sheffield on a day trip to do it. The chanting
song on the car radio seemed to have got it exactly right: The first thing I
met was a fly with a buzz, And the sky with no clouds.
The heat was hot and the ground was dry But the air
was full of sounds.We'd spent a weekend at Cwm Silyn and driving home up
the valley from Nantlle we noticed this south-facing ramp of slab, nearly 500ft
long, narrowing as it side-steps to the left of overhanging rock. Angel
Pavement was in the new selected climbs guide 1970), where Ron James
explained why we'd never heard of this long line of pinnacled rocks: 'This
large cliff is composed (or decomposed!) of numerous totty ridges.' But here
between them lay the irresistible line of Angel Pavement, the first of Tony
Moulam's honourable list of new routes in Wales and graded by him Severe in
nails. We had had to wait until the following Sunday to step on to that sunny
pavement of slab.
Now, 13 years later, I was again driving from home to
Craig y Bera, already late in the day and in the wettest August for years.
`It's going to rain, can't you feel it?' Mrs Evlyn Jones told me, painting her
gate at the farm below the crag, duffle-coat hood over her head, on the last
day of August. A peregrine was calling above us.
`It's only rained in the mornings in Sheffield'
`Do they grow bananas in Sheffield?'
Haskett-Smith on the first ascent of neighbouring Pinnacle Ridge in 1911.
The guide warns that access to the crag is not allowed
by the farmer living below it and that the situation is delicate, so I asked
this diminutive lady with the round smile and ready wit how I should approach
the crag and where to park.
`You can leave your car here and tell my husband I
told you so. He's gathering stones on the hill there.' And he was, gathering stone into great molehills to
make a scrap of cultivation on a level bit of hillside. 'In the villages that
nestle on these slopes lived a special brand of people, little known to the
brightly clad hordes that pour into Pen y Pass car park every weekend', wrote Dewi
Jones. 'These are the Tyddynwyr (small-holders) and the quarry-men, an almost
vanished race.' Gathering stones below this tottering mountain as we made our
way up to the unstable scree was a tyddynwyr of the almost vanished race,
straightening up to look at us as we passed above him. We didn't necessarily
expect to be allowed these indulgences of access another time. But
what indulgences? The direct approach to Angel Pavement is a moving pavement of
scree on which you feel as if you're going up the down escalator.
It's still best to do as Tony Moulam did a week after I was born and traverse into the crag from the head of the valley. The route description of Angel Pavement is actually superfluous, such is the purity of its superb line. I had forgotten how easily it starts, scrambling up heathery rock ledges until a little route-finding linking the ledges is necessary. I found only one runner in a full rope run-out, but no move is more than Diff. The second guidebook pitch is harder and actually best taken as two 75ft pitches of good friction and square-cut little fingerholds. Whenever a straight-up approach meets steepening rock a solution is to be found on the left. The next stance is the crucial one, cramped under a dribbling roof in which you'll find two small chockstones, although nuts can be added easily to improve the confidence.
I remembered my former leader, John Driskell,
disappearing left round the corner from here where the slab narrows and
steepens to a little wall. The slab is undercut below and by this height has
leaned a long way left. Now the evening light had shrunk to the bottom of the
valley below the slab. John had had not one brain hemorrhage, but two since I
watched him confidently step out on to the edge where the last light now
gathered. He still comes camping up in the high cwms with us, watching his
pulse-rate methodically, mocking our modern gear and our not climbing in 'a
little light drizzle'. To him I owe a lot of my first VSs, as his enthusiasm
pulled me upwards against my instinctive reluctance. And I owe to him my memory
of this route and this little crux. It's certainly a Severe move on a route
that is still graded V Diff,*( Now severe in the latest CC guide) although from here you'd fall off the slab and
hang in air. Angel Pavement has a deep gutter and if you step off the edge of
the pavement you'll need the wings and luck of an angel. Above this pitch the
rock gives way to scrambling over grass and heather laced with gorse.
There is just one more move round a corner which
causes you to work out how to finger the clean-cut angles of steep rock to the
right. But the belays are big sociable eyries where, 13 years ago, I had
chatted to Dave as he brought up Agnes behind John and I.
Then one Friday evening as we were assembled in the back room of the Nursery Tavern as usual, Dave appeared in the doorway with a small, shy girl who didn't speak a word of English. Dave had just brought her from East Midlands Airport on the back of his motorbike. At that precise moment, as she was having her first taste of Mrs Jenkins' best bitter, her parents thought she was at the pictures in Paris. She climbed Angel Pavement without hesitation too.
Back to the present — the light had now almost gone
and what I'd not remembered was how to get down. I kept leading left, avoiding
loose rock and the abyss below as much as possible, until the neck behind the buttress
dipped down the other side to a scree descent to end all scree descents, unless
you're careful.
We got down to the farm in the dark. Mrs Jones was
shutting up the hens with a torch. She had obviously been keeping an eye out
for us.
`You should have been here in the earthquake,' she
said. 'I thought the mountain was going to fall down on us.'
Local climbers we spoke to the next day thought it was
falling down already. It's this reputation of Craig y Bera that keeps Angel
Pavement fairly untrodden. Between threats of rain and nightfall I'd snatched
another angelic walk, although in the pub I began to wonder if maybe my
memories had made it glow just a little more than it really deserves. Make the journey to the crag of pyramids and pinnacles
yourself one day, when it's raining on the higher hills but the sun is playing
on Angel Pavement. As we drove away, America began to retell a tale:
On the first part of the journey
I was looking at all the life
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rain.
The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz
And the sky with no clouds
The heat was hot and the ground was dry
But the air was full of sounds.
Terry Gifford. The Joy Of Climbing: Whittle Publishing
