May Bank Holiday Weekend: North Wales
The location: Cefn Goch – Cefn Goch Farm, Deiniolen, LL55 3EF
Bank Holiday weekend climbing in Snowdonia!
**The hut is fully booked. You can still join this meet by arranging your own accommodation**
There is a campsite in Llanberis that is not too far away. If you do arrange your own accommodation please sign up below using the ‘own accommodation’ ticket type and respond to the Facebook event as ‘Going’.
We’re off to the mountains of North Wales for the first May bank holiday weekend this year.
Meet lead: Jo Payne
Cost:
This meet will cost £40 per person. This includes a bed in the hut Friday, Saturday and Sunday night and a group meal on the Saturday evening.
Please note – when booking a place on this meet you are committing to attending. We cannot offer refunds for meets where the Club has booked accommodation in advance as this leaves us out of pocket. If, after booking, you cannot attend for any reason you can recoup the cost by finding another SCC member to ‘sell’ your space to. If you do this or cannot attend, please let the committee know.
If we have to cancel this meet due to Covid restrictions we will be able to refund the cost.
Accommodation:
We will be staying at the Gloucestershire Mountaineering Club (GMC) Hut in Deiniolen, just outside Llanberis and right next to the slate quarries.
The hut is a classic club hut with accommodation for up to 20 people. This is provided in bunk beds across 3 rooms (6 bed, 6 bed and 8 bed). The beds are not allocated and the rooms are mixed. Bedding is not provided so you will need to bring at least a sleeping bag and pillow.
Further facilities include male and female washrooms / showers, a large communal room with a multi fuel stove, a fully equipped kitchen, and an external drying room.
There is space for approximately 7 vehicles at the front of the property with further parking on the road.
The hut is set back from the main road and is accessed from this track shown here: GMC hut location
The area:
Although some of you will be very familiar with North Wales others may not. We are staying in Snowdonia National Park, perhaps a 20 minute drive from the foot of both Tryfan and Snowdon. Snowdonia obviously also offers may other mountains varying in height and contains a huge range of walking, hiking, scrambling and climbing.
This link shows the climbing available just within 10 k of Llanberis: A little bit of climbing in North Wales
The climbing in the area is almost all trad and ranges from easy scrambles to classic high E grades in the Llanberis pass. This exception is the slate quarries which have quite a few areas that are bolted as well as trad routes. The quarries are also worth an explore just for the scenery, history and atmosphere. The GMC hut is about a 10 minute drive from the quarries.
Llanberis itself has several pubs, Pete’s Eats, a Spar, and most importantly multiple gear shops so is a great place for all other essentials that you may need over the weekend.
Things to bring:
Essential:
- Sleeping stuff – Sleeping bag and pillow
- Climbing stuff (only essential if you actually plan on climbing) – Harness, rock shoes, belay device, helmet, prussik, sling and carabiner
- Clothing – Warm clothes, and spare ones if they get wet. As it will be early May it might be worth packing some shorts too
- Weather gear – Waterproofs and a good pair of boots or shoes. Suncream
- Personal – stuff for showering including a towel!
- Food – Something for at least breakfast will be handy but there is a shop in Llanberis
- Water bottle – at least one for use when out and about
Desirable (bring if you have these):
- Trad rack, half ropes, single rope
- Approach shoes
- Boulder mat
- Guide books
- Maps of the area
- Walking poles
- Food for lunch and snacks for the hills / crags
The Club has a stock of guidebooks which are kept at Bouldershack. This can be accessed by asking at the front desk for the key to the SCC library. Members are welcome to borrow guidebooks for the meet but please sign then out and return them promptly.
Members are also able to borrow gear from the club. This can be done by filling out an equipment request form. Details can be found here.
Food and drink:
The hut has a fully equipped kitchen for cooking and storing food. There is a spar in Llanberis which stocks a standard range of food and drinks.
We will be cooking a group meal on Saturday night in the hut. This is included in the cost of the met. Please remember to add any dietary requirements when booking your ticket.
There are several pubs in Llanberis as well as the famous Pete’s Eats cafe which is popular with climbers.
The local environment:
The crags in Snowdonia vary greatly from the woodlands around Tremadog, to the weather-beaten Llanberis pass where trees are almost non-existent. Across the region centuries of felling for timber and heavy grazing have left their mark on the landscape, and efforts are now being made to help it regenerate.
The climbing community has worked with local groups to help remove non-native trees and ivy. We can help by taking litter home (even if it’s not ours), taking care not to damage trees when setting up abseils, keeping to established paths, and avoiding the removal of vegetation including moss and lichen.
Temporary or permanent restrictions may also be in place to protect nesting birds or rare fauna, these are all published on the BMC Regional Access Database
Travel:
Although there is reasonable parking at the hut, please try to car share as much as possible. A Facebook event has been set up to help facilitate with this, so feel free to post a message in there if you are able to offer lifts, or are still looking for one.