Great Wall | E4 Trad climb on Clogwyn Du'r Arddu

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Pete Crew:

Brown’s rule at that time was to use no more than two pegs per pitch, he decided to retreat, leaving the abseil peg marking his highest point. Over the years, this peg on the wall became a constant reminder of Brown's superiority over the rest of the field. He tried to climb back up the wall on several occasions but could not get past the difficult lower section. The wall grew in reputation, just as Cenotaph Corner had years before; the final blank section grew from Brown's original estimate to a figure that sometimes reached 40 feet; the wall became known as the Master's Wall - Brown's own territory, on which no-one else dared to trespass, and it was assumed that sooner or later it would fall to the Master...

On the Sunday it was still blowing hard, but I persuaded Bas to go up to Cloggy, just to "have a look" at the wall. I think he realised that it was going to be more than just a look when I carried both our 300-foot ropes up to the crag... the first half of the climb went quickly and I arrived at Brown's abseil peg feeling fresh and confident. Neither of us was very keen to belay on the minute stance, so I fixed a couple of runners and carried on. The next 40 feet or so seemed easy and then I came to the final crack. As the chocks were in place I had not brought any up with me. I realised what a mistake this was when the first one dropped out. I moved up again to the next chock, a small pebble, fixed a sling in it and stepped into the sling. The chock split in half. By now I was getting desperate as I could not take much weight off my arms and my last decent runner was about 50 feet below, on the ledge. Just above the split chock the crack almost closed, so I spent the next ten minutes working a sling into this constriction using a peg. By this time I was absolutely shattered - I was half-standing in the sling on the split chock and using a layback hold with one hand. I sat in the sling to have a smoke and the mist cleared a bit ... Once I had recovered the rest went easily ...

We had a bit of a problem naming the route. Everyone knew it as the Master's Wall, and if Joe had climbed it, that would have been the perfect name. But it seemed presumptuous so we opted for the Great Wall.

References

[1] Clogwyn Du'r Arddu Climber's Club Guidebook (1989) Page 147 /library/7278/clogwyn-dur-arddu