Ben Walley and Olaf Scudamore have climbed some top quality lines on a big, but strangely neglected boulder in the Loerennau Carreg-filltir/Milestone Satellites. See page 313 in the NWB 3.1 guide.

In 2007 Nige Callander climbed the impressive Passage of Time but the striking crack line to its right stayed untouched. There’s been a lot of activity in Dyffryn Ogwen of late so it was inevitable that, sooner-or-later, somebody would grasp the challenge of this great line – that somebody turned out to be the ever-keen Ben Walley, as he explains:

”So I had seen ‘The Passage of Time’ in the 2017 North Wales Bouldering guide and thought how has the line to the right not been done? After going for a wander up on a fairly dry summers day I could see it was mega wet and kinda forgot about it. Was only until late January of this year after climbing in the Pit that a few mates wanted to go try ‘Flip Flops and Fronded Ferns’, so I decided to check it out again and found that it was actually pretty dry. My friend Olaf and I went back a couple of days later to clean up some of the crack as well as a line he had his eye on round the corner. I couldn’t do my line that day as the crack really needed a good clean.”

“Olaf went back two days later and snapped up his line which was a really cool slopey lip traverse which he’s called ‘No Russian’ and rates about 7A+ (looks hard in my opinion).”

“So, spurred on by his success I carried up two pads and an extendable ladder and spent about an hour scooping out loads of mud from the crack which has really reduced the seeping. But was too scared to top out by myself. I then went back with Jack and Gwil and finished it off fairly quickly, albeit getting scared on the slab for about 7 mins!”

“I went back the other day and abbed down the direct version which is also a really cool line that luckily went 2nd go. Grades were tricky to tell and the moves are powerful, but didn’t feel super hard so more traffic is needed to solidify them.”

So that’s three stellar additions: No Russian (7A+), The Vault of Glass (7A) and Vision of Confluence (7A).

There’s loads more quality Ogwen grade 7 FAs not too far from here, and which will get a full report soon. In the mean time sit back and watch Ben’s neat little FA film:

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