There have been many contenders for the most dangerous book in the world: The Malleus Maleficarum, How to Cook a Human, The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion, and Mein Kampf.
Well, for the rock climber, the Pen Llŷn Guide is right up there amongst them. Pen Llŷn is compiled by that legend of British sea cliff climbing Pat Littlejohn and ‘The Perfect Man’ (yes, that’s his nickname - TPM) - Mick Lovatt. Within the pages of this book are the details and descriptions to the most terrifying rock climbs in the world.
Well, for the rock climber, the Pen Llŷn Guide is right up there amongst them. Pen Llŷn is compiled by that legend of British sea cliff climbing Pat Littlejohn and ‘The Perfect Man’ (yes, that’s his nickname - TPM) - Mick Lovatt. Within the pages of this book are the details and descriptions to the most terrifying rock climbs in the world.
Mick Lovatt on the first ascent of "Safe As Milk" (E7/6c) at Craig Dorys in Pen Llyn, UK (Photo Credit: Jethro Kiernan)
And I don’t say this flipantly. The guidebook writers warn that, “Grades and descriptions should be treated with extreme caution” and “Exposure to big seas and rain laden gales may cause whole routes to fall into the sea.” This did in fact happen to me, when a whole arch containing a fantastic new route I had just climbed collapsed into the sea in a storm a week later.
Even though the authors may caution that, “Most routes of any grade will leave and indelible mark in the memory for many reasons, whether that be quality of the rock, exposure … and in some cases, personal survival,” it is impossible to convey what awaits you when you venture down ‘The Llŷn’.
Guide book reviews are so often staid affairs, so I thought instead of telling you how many pages it’s got and how useful is the index, I would take you through a typical day’s climbing I once had with my friend Manwell (due to his ashen pallor we called him ‘Mansick’ - though his real name was Leigh McGinley).
To get there, we felt like we were walking off the end of the planet. An immense orange headland drops off in a huge grassy bulbous curve. I skidded down the gradually steepening slope in my Allstars™ until we reached a ‘line-of-latitude-sheep-track’ on near vertical ground a hundred metres above the crashing waves. It was always a nerve-jangling approach.
Even though the authors may caution that, “Most routes of any grade will leave and indelible mark in the memory for many reasons, whether that be quality of the rock, exposure … and in some cases, personal survival,” it is impossible to convey what awaits you when you venture down ‘The Llŷn’.
Guide book reviews are so often staid affairs, so I thought instead of telling you how many pages it’s got and how useful is the index, I would take you through a typical day’s climbing I once had with my friend Manwell (due to his ashen pallor we called him ‘Mansick’ - though his real name was Leigh McGinley).
To get there, we felt like we were walking off the end of the planet. An immense orange headland drops off in a huge grassy bulbous curve. I skidded down the gradually steepening slope in my Allstars™ until we reached a ‘line-of-latitude-sheep-track’ on near vertical ground a hundred metres above the crashing waves. It was always a nerve-jangling approach.
Nick Bullock on "War and Peace" (E6/6a) at Craig Dorys (Photo Credit: Mick Lovatt)
Once at the narrow path we hung our bags on the metal plumber’s pipe that had been driven into the hillside, perhaps by Jack Street, one of the legendary pioneers of this place. We then threaded a rabbit warren with a length of sling brought specially for the job and rigged up the abseil.
A day’s climbing here is an act of submission. You have to surrender to whatever may befall you. The best Llŷn climbers flow like water. They do not resist. They give in, cede control to the cliff - work with the rock, not against it. In this way, to climb at Pen Llŷn is a spiritual exercise – arising and passing, arising and passing. Just like the loose blocks this area is ill-famed for.
A day’s climbing here is an act of submission. You have to surrender to whatever may befall you. The best Llŷn climbers flow like water. They do not resist. They give in, cede control to the cliff - work with the rock, not against it. In this way, to climb at Pen Llŷn is a spiritual exercise – arising and passing, arising and passing. Just like the loose blocks this area is ill-famed for.
Jack Street at Cilan Head in 1969. This was possibly during the first ascent of "The Groove." (Photo Credit: Chris Jackson)
I think I rappelled first, down a bird-shit-stinking wall of tottering Jenga blocks, to a sloping greasy rock platform where very few humans have ever been, save for shipwrecked sailors. “Safe!” I had to time my call to coincide with a break in the deafening waves.
I looked up the vast wall of Birdy, a climb that is, "Perhaps the most daunting undertaking on the Llŷn," so the new guide states. As Dave ‘Skinny’ Jones and Ray Kay created this masterpiece of neck nearly 35 years ago, that is saying something. I contacted the understated 'Skinny' for his thoughts on the climb:
I looked up the vast wall of Birdy, a climb that is, "Perhaps the most daunting undertaking on the Llŷn," so the new guide states. As Dave ‘Skinny’ Jones and Ray Kay created this masterpiece of neck nearly 35 years ago, that is saying something. I contacted the understated 'Skinny' for his thoughts on the climb:
I got to the halfway up this groove on pitch two and realised that the last piece of gear was 50-foot below me, just off the hanging belay. I had to keep on bridging up the groove thinking 'there has to be something.' When I got there, there was nothing but a bulging wall. I wasn't scared [authors note: This is no place for the intrusion of fear] but I had a moment when I realised that if I tried to climb the bulge above me and snapped a hold or it was a blind alley and I fell I would either hit the deck or rip Ray off the belay.”
Like water…
Mansick and I entered the amphitheatre. One could imagine ‘The Sea Morgen’ luring fishermen to their deaths down here. Craning our necks we each gazed up at the faltering cliff. Stratum upon stratum of shale, and large breaks white painted with guano.
Above, a truly massive ceiling hung over us, suspended like some great hydraulic press. Jack Street had crossed this ceiling on builders’ bolts in 1969, when I was still at my mother’s breast. All we could make out twelve rusty stains - what remained of these bolts. Manwell and I had come to attempt to free climb this visionary route, Street and his partner Chris Jackson had rather beguilingly named, ‘The Groove’. It had not seen a repeat for at least a decade judging by the state of the bolts, so we had brought with us a few pitons and a hammer.
Manwell set off up the Cambrian Period Sediment of The Hell’s Mouth Formation and, after an unprotected tussle with a bulge, made it to a ledge and belayed.
Mansick and I entered the amphitheatre. One could imagine ‘The Sea Morgen’ luring fishermen to their deaths down here. Craning our necks we each gazed up at the faltering cliff. Stratum upon stratum of shale, and large breaks white painted with guano.
Above, a truly massive ceiling hung over us, suspended like some great hydraulic press. Jack Street had crossed this ceiling on builders’ bolts in 1969, when I was still at my mother’s breast. All we could make out twelve rusty stains - what remained of these bolts. Manwell and I had come to attempt to free climb this visionary route, Street and his partner Chris Jackson had rather beguilingly named, ‘The Groove’. It had not seen a repeat for at least a decade judging by the state of the bolts, so we had brought with us a few pitons and a hammer.
Manwell set off up the Cambrian Period Sediment of The Hell’s Mouth Formation and, after an unprotected tussle with a bulge, made it to a ledge and belayed.
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Shuffling along a terrace, banked up with 45-degrees of shale and seagull shit I cast a nervous glance to Manwell who was also looking nervous (though after going on expeditions to Cerro Torre and Torres del Paine together, we knew each other’s foibles). The double ropes sagged down, a useless washing line, for what seemed like a hundred metres. It may as well have been as it wouldn’t have stopped me from hitting the sea washed platform below.
From the end of this traverse, I had to make a series of steep pulls off this ledge without gear, until I fiddled something in and carried on to another small prominence. Manwell swung through and found a semi-hanging rotten stance below the ceiling. From here we could make out that not all of the bolts had rusted away completely. Some still had eyes. But when I climbed up to the roof, the first metal bolt crumbled in my hand like a newly discovered Egyptian mummy. Not to be daunted, I stretched out at full span for the second and that too disintegrated. There was, however, a hairline fracture (like your favourite mug that is cracked but you can’t bear to throw it away). I took a knife-blade and tapped it in just shy of an inch before it bottomed out. Giving it a good tug I tied the downward point peg off and swung onto it. I placed another… Then another… each time the hairline fracture bottomed out. It is difficult not to put all your weight on a piece when you’re hanging in the horizontal. I tried not to loosen the knife blades, but each time I shifted my position it would set off a metronome effect - a highly-strung pendulum that I was powerless to halt. |
Mick Lovatt on the first ascent of "Safe As Milk" (E7/6c) (Photo Credit: Jethro Kiernan)
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If one piton pulled the other two would go and I would take a factor-one directly onto the belay.
The seagulls wheeled. bats in a belfry. Above the violent waves.
But the pitons held and, at length, I gained the immense groove that split the great roof in two. Pulling into ‘The Groove’ I discovered solidity and scampered up to a belay and security..
The seagulls wheeled. bats in a belfry. Above the violent waves.
But the pitons held and, at length, I gained the immense groove that split the great roof in two. Pulling into ‘The Groove’ I discovered solidity and scampered up to a belay and security..
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I had put myself - and my ‘plus one' - in this perilous position. But that is what you and your partner came to expect every time you went down to the Llŷn. Like a pre-nuptial agreement, every partner should know what they are getting themselves into.
We felt compelled to go down to Pen Llŷn, as some morbid fascination drew us across the Welsh Hills, out of the bleak Eryri (Snowdonia in English), past the 2000-year-old hillfort of Tre'r Ceiri, through the Llŷn Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) to the Llŷn Area of Outstanding Danger (AOND). Pen Llŷn is the epicentre of UK on-sight. What climbers have achieved here in terms of ground-up climbing, well, in many cases sea-up climbing, is frankly out of this world. British climbing is well known for risk, but when you venture down to Pen Llŷn you take a gamble on your life. Sure, there’s the amazing well-trod classics like Avernus, a solid 250-meter HVS (5.9) up the highest coastal cliff in Cymru (Wales) or Path To Rome which traverses above the lip of a great sea cave for an entire pitch at E3 5c (5.11). However, the loose unpredictable nature of most of the 100+ cliffs contained in this book Pen Llŷn, make climbing here feel like you’re risking your life - more than you would participating in ‘normal’ rock climbing. |
Nick Bullock seconding on "Scintillating Stitches" at Golden Wall at Craig Dorys, Pen Llŷn, UK (Photo Credit: Graham Desroy)
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Map excerpt from the guidebook "Pen Llŷn: The Climbers’ Club Guide to the Llŷn Peninsula" By Pat Littlejohn and Mick Lovatt.
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In addition to Birdy, among the 'Chop Routes,' there is Johnny Dawes’s Professor Whittaker, the second E7 new route climbed on-sight, I believe (The first being Hardback Thesaurus, again by Dawes). On that climb Dawes became committed and had to make powerful moves on dubious holds whilst facing a 20-meter deck-out. There are other more modern horrors at Craig Doris like the Stevie Haston creation Night Stalker which climbs through a huge roof on loose rock (probably impossible to be given an American grade). The Guide simply states that it is, “extremely intimidating." And again, at Doris, Nick Bullock (of Piolet D’or fame) and Mick Lovatt have very recently added their own clutch of spiritual awkenings.
You put yourself in a life and death struggle every time you go down there. I live on the other side of the world now, about as far from Pen Llŷn as it is possible to go on the globe, but I can never forget those roulette situations willingly accepted as part of life. And it is no different today. How could it be? Ban this book. It should be illegal to sell it to the unsuspecting climber... Having scared the bejesus out of you - it must be said that the area has changed massively over the past decade to open the area to climbers who have a strong sense of adventure and are seeking climbs of a more amenable grade.There are also many high quality mid-grade sport routes on the many inland granite crags. Genuinely, since the publication of this book teams are out there loving the experience without feeling like they’re dicing with death!" |
Nick Bullock on the first ascent of "Ride My Llama" (e7/6a) at Craig Dorys, Pen Llŷn, UK (Photo Credit: Jethro Kiernan)
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Pen Llŷn: The Climbers’ Club Guide to the Llŷn Peninsula
By Pat Littlejohn and Mick Lovatt. Published by The Climbers’ Club
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