Today I took Ben back to Ogwen as it gave us an opportunity to cover lots of technical terrain and link up lots of scrambles. In fact we hardly did any uphill walking, only scrambling and climbing! Ben was keen to look at moving efficiently over technical terrain and learn about the transition between rock climbing and scrambling and how to use the rope appropriately. We started off on North-West Face Route (Grade 2 *) and then moved onto the continuation wall on Idwal Staircase (Grade 2 **). To move over this terrain we were mainly moving together, sometime pitching short tricky moves but reached Seniors Ridge quite quickly. From here we moved over to Cneifion Arête (Grade 3 ***) where I led two pitches to start and then we moved together to the top with Ben leading all the way. Still with plenty of time left we picked up the False Gribin ridge (Grade 1 *) and then dropped of the side to pick up the bottom of Dolmain Ridge (Grade 3 ***). I led the whole of the route taking Ben through some interesting terrain and looking at different ways of protecting ourselves whilst keeping movement efficient. We topped out in good time so we finished off by soloing down Bristly Ridge (Grade 1 ***). A great day with lots of mileage. Finished off the day with 3 routes in the slate quarries with Dave Evans before running away from the midges.
