This month Big G shines a light upon the much discussed potential of the Rhinogs. NWB.com’s editor can confirm the enticing nature of this month’s discovery, having spied the same escarpments last October while out on a family walk. At the time I was under strict instructions not to abandon said family and go and investigate closer. Luckily Big G was able to do the detailed site assessment and report back.

I sense another chapter forming for the new guide…

Dear NWB.com readers,

Roman Steps? What have the Roman Steps ever done for us?

Well, might I be so bold as to suggest that a path was not this lovingly engineered simply for the conduct of ancient business to and from Cwm Bychan. No; the hardy people who laid this impressive sequence of slabs were leading us in the first stages of an important exploration of the northern ‘Rhinogs’ (not characters from the Moomintrolls or Clangers but in fact-small mountains).

An ascent to the mammothly cairned high point of the pass (gr 659 300) will reveal, not one hundred metres to the north, an escarpment of good rock, elegantly cracked and sculpted with reasonable multi-pad landings throughout. A few slopers have been tentatively brushed, the big jam cracks have been done, but, here we miss the point. This escarpment is just a gatehouse to the glory beyond. There is more rock than moorland!

In a few years time every boulderer will have GPS'd it out here, to a whole series of random looking map points, denoting heavenly pieces of rock in the very remotest and most inconvenient settings.

Already the obscurity-hoppers are out there, bouncing through knee-deep heather and bog, approaching from Trawsfynydd to the east, Landecwyn to the north west and from this most noble of cwms to the west.

Make with yer compass...the story has only just begun. (...er, red is north, white's south)

Power to the lost,

Big G

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