People sometimes foolishly claim that the Pass is worked out – Big G knows better:

The ‘Badgers Thumbstone’ of upper Dinas Mot

Dear NWB.com readers,
November; and the leaves take flight like winter’s little black butterflies of death, crossing the indifferent grey skies, only to crash and rot in the cold light of the half-arsed sun. Loathsome clouds em-blanket the sodden hills, haunted by ghostly swathes of rain and sleet. The evenings are done for.

The high places may just be a memory now, but if you get a chance to stomp up to the left of the unpretty vertical hong-jagged hanging glooms of Dinas Mot East Wing, and exhausted, you carry on directly up a few hundred metres, you will get to some stuff...Above and beyond the un-aesthetic barrier.

The ‘Badgers Thumb’ is not thus named without reason. It is as rough a texture as you would find on the Crib y Ddysgol climbs above.
A struggling ‘top-er-out-er’ might even contemplate a full-body slump towards the top of any problem hereabouts, and with a well fitted fleece a static position may be attained. There are twenty or so good problems here on class chunks. Many involve cracks so good it should probably be a world heritage site.

So - drive up and stare through the drizzle and wonder.
And if it’s too wet...well...
We can retreat to the Cromlech Boulders with our puffa-coats and watch as our mats clear off up the Pass the very moment we step off them onto clammy slopers.

Hey-ho,
T’ll be Spring soon.

Now is the winter of our discontent,
Made glorious summer by this ton of chalk!

Love, Big G



Further reading:

The first reference to badger activity in this area was a mention from early ascentionists of Slow Ledge Climb on the West Wing; “we happened upon the old fellow, shuffling from one shelf to the next in much the same style as ourselves...”

The last badger to live in Upper Cwm Glas left in 1977

It was a shock to most people in the UK when, with the advent of colour TV, badgers turned out to be...black and white! Some keen naturalists were said to have hit the side of their new televisions when the first colour footage of these nocturnal creatures was broadcast.

In the mid 80s one local climber claimed a problem here called the “badgers arse” but supplied only a very rough description of its whereabouts.

Relevant links: