A friend 'Spider' decided that she wanted to do a 'Big Easy Mountain Route' with us so she arranged for a trip to Wales whereby her and another friend 'Tiger' could also come along as guest members.
Unfortunately Malc couldn't come this time, I can't remember why but I think it had something to do with the weather forecast.
There was problem though, The Friday night of the weekend of our trip there was a party celebrating the birthday of another friend (Bear). This called for a tight schedule. We worked out that if we all met up on Saturday at 12:30 at the railway station in Leeds the we could leave by 12:45 be in the Ogwen Valley by 15:15 allow for 15 minutes faffing at the car (15:30). Be at the foot of the Idwall Slabs by 16:00 allow for 15 minutes faffing at the foot of the slabs and be climbing by 16:15. This would give us about 3 hours climbing before it got dark and we could camp on the ledges that we had vague memories of at the top of the slabs before continuation wall. If we couldn't camp on the ledges then we should still have time to escape, in daylight, to the Nameless Cwm. EASY.
As it happened it didn't happen quite so smoothly, one of the members of the expedition party had a little too much at Bear's party on Friday night which resulted in him sitting on the doorstep for 3 hours throwing up into the front garden. Being the caring people that we are this meant that me and Spider spent far longer than we expected at the party nursing our casualty until his aspirations to the equestrian form abated.
So after a healthy 3 hours sleep I was on my way to town to meet with the others as planned. We didn't leave the train station until 13:15.
By the time we were at the foot of the Slabs we were running about 1.5 hours behind schedule. This was not looking good for us. However, we had a definate venear of cool. We must have looked like we knew what we were doing. Starting a 500M rock face at past 5pm in October. The fact that 4 of the 5 of us had had no more than 3 hours sleep the night before was completely veiled from passers by. 
We were obviously to climb with full packs as we were planning to camp half way up the climb. I could barely walk with my pack let alone climb. None of us could look up, those with helmets less so than those of us who either don't own them or who were so un-together had unpacked them before leaving the car at the car park.Those who know the slabs will know that the gradient is easy and the climbing good. Even in walking boots, full packs and having had little sleep the previous night it wasn't too bad and before long we were at the top of the slabs. It was now dark.
Before we we left the car we had been a bit concerned that someone may call mountain rescue if they saw the lights from our head torches half way up the crag at night so we had informed the wardens in their little hut of our intentions. They were, however, quite uninterested and indicated that, because if 999 was called then it would be investigated, it would probably be for the best to try and remain unseen and use our torches as little as possible. As we wandered around the various ledges at the top of the slabs a torch light from across the valley was purposefully and relentlessly flashing in our direction so we ignored it for the best part of 20 minutes while we walked back and forth over the ledges looking for a spot where we could pitch 3 tents relatively close to one another. I imagine this looked like we were trying and failing to find a way down but it was dark and cold and we had to work out what we were doing if we were to get any food and sleep. 
As our meal prep was drawing to a close (which took the best part of an hour (maybe more as we had 2, all but empty, gas canisters which could barely make water boil) we realised that between the four of us we had one fork. Our veneer of cool had worn through. We had, between us left a helmet and a sleeping mat in the car. Only one of us had any eating utensils, we had virtually no gas and two of us had head torches that were perfect for stargazing but not much else.
The next morning we awoke and our cool had returned as we looked down at the losers starting their days climb while we were preparing breakfast 2 hours ahead of them. Climbing the Idwall slabs was not the plan for our 'Big easy Mountain route' weekend. That was just the approach. We decided to do 'Direct Route' on Glyder Fach in the next valley (so it wasn't a very direct approach but then 'direct route' isn't very direct either as it turned out).
After the traditional Breakfast (which I feel both Spider and Tiger shamelessly let me take the lions share of the veggie option) we set off to the next valley
It was a nice enough route. A small amount of easy traverses, it was easy enough to climb in gloves which was pretty essential due to us, as usual, choosing a north facing climb
It was all going pretty well until we got to here. This is the final, very short pitch. I'd led a tiny pitch but had let Mark do all the work as I am still a bit shaky about leading since the various nightmares I have every time I go out with the BEMR. On top of this Ben had lost my climbing boots a few weeks before in the lakes so I had my 15 year old 'Joshua Tree's' with my toes poking out the front and a rip running the entire length of the side of the boot making it impossible to tighten.
