Bad Ideas Descend on Snakes and Ladders-May

After the last snakes and ladders trip, it was only natural more friends would want to come. This soon turned into a team of 5. Ash, Dan, German, Matt and Me.

German and Dan, basically having more holiday time than is natural, were already in Llanberis climbing, Matt, Ash and me drove down that morning, all having took the day off work.

After an unnaturally long drive (traffic was bad) we had the obligatory crap team photo in the car park.











We soon set off and the idea was to leave the route finding to German, Ash and Matt, as they'd never been there before. When they got lost before arriving at California, this idea was quickly abandoned and we just showed them round.

This was German at the end of the first tunnel looking up at "The Guillotine" before he realised why it had this name and quickly moving out the way.

Now if you read the last blog post, you'll remember that we spent several hours looking for the "Tunnel to Hades" and we knew where it came out, but not where it went it. This trip, since time was on our side we decided to enter through the exit to find the entrance, if that makes sense. It was a little imposing looking down on it.

First we had to get down there. Everyone else opted for a very long winded abseil (took them over 1 hour to set it up somehow) me? I went for an easy scramble down, it took ten minutes to walk around and scramble down. 

In accordance with the "spirit of the route" headtorches were banned. This tunnel was dark. Very dark. And full of water. And long, wow it was long, and it wasn't getting lighter. The reason for this was soon discovered. 

The entrance had collapsed. All my dreams were ruined. Back out we went, this time with torches. Everyone went back up my little scramble to tackle the chains on the route. Matt isn't really into hard climbing, Dan didn't feel up to leading the chains, I'd led them before. We decided that Ash would lead them first, I'd second him, then German would lead them for Matt and Dan to second them. Despite using the worst technique humanly possible for the chains,  Ash flew up them, not bad for someone climbing about 5 months. 

I quickly seconded and we carried on, as I wanted Ash to try and find the secret tunnel on his own. We left the others to the chains to screams and shouts. (Dan was busy falling for the entertainment of the others).

Eventually, with a few hints Ash found the tunnel, but we must of waited 40 minutes for the others (what they were doing, I do not know. We got some cool pictures of them coming through the end of the tunnel and across the quarry. Spot the climbers.

After squeezing through "The Love Cave" we had to cross a huge scree field to get to some ladders we missed out last time. Dan and Matt took the high road whilst the rest of us went low. The outcome were some cool photos, lots of falling rocks and lots of mutterings from the german of "This is fucking ridiculous"

Then the ladders started, the first one was the one we missed last time, a big leaning, badly attached and badly joined ladder. The only took a few minutes for us all to quickly jump up.

Then there is the whole series of ladders to gain the upper level. We started off sensibly, one at a time...but pretty soon, even on the ones that shake in the wind, we were getting pretty silly. Having a fireman in the group used to cocking about on ladders definitely didn't help.

This lead to the abseils,brilliant fun, but why is it always my job to set them up?

On to my favourite part of the route, the chains coming down, words fail me here. But theres some cool photos from it, I'll just show you them.

The final long ladders lead to the bridge of death. Hearts starting to beat faster now, I know this time I can't back out of it, I have to do it, for my own pride more than anything.

I race up the ladders, and across to the bridge, anchor the rope, strip down and I race across to set up a safety line for the others and I do this quickly to avoid running out of courage before I make it.

Damn it was scary, didn't help that the bridge is held together entire by one rusty bolt on one side, and no bolts on the other, right in the middle. That was a suprise.

Once across we set up a tensioned line running across from both sides so the others could cross the bridge safely.

This left Ash, the new guy, climbing under 5 months, on the other side. We all shouted "Clip on, come across, we'll walk round and fetch the rope". But no, he wanted to bring the rope with him, effectively doing it completely unprotected, on a collapsing bridge. We warned him not to, but before we could stop him, this happened.

He was relieved on the other side though, saying, and I quote, "I'm never doing that again".

This route never fails to give a good day out, and writing this now, I fancy going again.