Mark was working in Snowdonia at the time so Ben, Malc and I drove down early one Saturday morning. We weren't 100% sure where the climb was so we arranged to meet at the car park where the Ogwen and Idwel Valleys meet. When we were half way there we phoned Mark to give him our ETA. In fact we lied and arrived 30 minutes before Mark so that we could get cooking our all day breakfast in a tin ready for when Mark turned up.
After choosing an interesting approach route (Probably the most dangerous part of the day) we found the start of the climb and started sorting our gear out. We decided that as the route was so easy we'd climb it 'gladiator style' i.e simultaneously in two pairs. I think that this is probably frowned upon as there was a fair bit of rope crossing (if one leader fell they'd possibly take the other one with them) but, on the other hand it did mean that if I was leading up a bit behind the other leader I could place gear for them as the others don't seem to like placing gear much.
I’d wanted to do Amphitheater Buttress since I was about 16 so I suggested it to the others and we went and did it. I thought it was great, it was a bit on the easy side- I think it’s only a diff, but then we are the big easy mountain routes club. Also it meant we could play around loads and wander around off route without putting ourselves in too much danger.
Except for Andy’s approach route that is.
The thing you have to realise is that, while past his best, Andy is also a very experienced climber and mountaineer and is qualifying as a mountain leader (if any of his instructors are reading this there’s some things you need to know …) I on the other hand was only very slowly getting back into climbing having only ever done a couple of years of it in my late teens anyway. So when he called me and Mark back from the obvious descent path and took us ‘the right way’ I followed him. 20 minutes later his path petered out and due to the fact we were too busy slagging him off for getting lost to notice what was happening, we ended up in a bit of trouble. The fact that we never stopped laughing was not a sign that we weren’t in danger – it was just hysteria. Whilst walking to the bottom of a climb you shouldn’t ever end up clinging to steep rock with a nasty drop below you unable to move. Anyway we all made it out in one piece with Andy helpfully bringing up the rear.
The climb itself was excellent and as the strenuous approach had absorbed most of what the breakfasts could throw at us it was only slightly marred by nausea. I think Andy might have a worse time of it though as I'd managed to drink most of his water without him noticing when we swapped rucksacks on the approach. (His was too heavy apparently, containing a few more wires and quick draws than mine).
All in all Amphitheater Buttress was a bit of a disappointment as we did the crux without noticing (reading the guidebook at the next stance) we noticed that we were further up than we thought.
As we'd done the crux of the climb without noticing we decided to go over every possible peak to make it as interesting as possible
It was whilst on this climb that we looked over to our right to the other side of the Amphitheater and noticed some interesting looking climbs that we may work towards in the future. We were also a bit disillusioned with the big easy mountain route idea as this climb was a little too easy. We therefore decided that for our next climb we would probably go up a grade and attempt a 'Severe'
Towards the end of a beautiful day with the evening sun shining down on us we saw to our right a huge black cliff, totally dominating the abyss-like gully that it formed one side of. Mark looked in the guide and found a VS called 'mur y niwl' which wound in and out of all the e1s an 2s right up it. We figured this was a bit too much for our next outing but decided to think about doing it in September or maybe next year after some intensive cragging and a few more big routes. Our next route would be a Mild Severe or something which we should be capable of doing but would still provide a bit of excitement.
