King of the Mezz | E7 Trad climb at Twll Mawr

First ascent.

I did it on a whim really. We got to the top of the Quarryman groove and I thought what can we do? I’ve done all the existing lines before so I thought I would just go for the traverse line. I got across and suddenly found myself bridging on poor smears, hanging on an edge and having to dyne (sic). At one point I had to sort of layback on the cheek of my face so I could swap hands on a hold. It was very tricky. [1]

Neil Dyer:

It was desperate, we couldn’t really do the moves on the crux. Fair enough we had a sneaky beer on the belay which always takes your edge off, bt still; it was so hard and then run-out after the hard bit was outrageous. Johnny clipped the Fire Escape bolts and then that was it, all the way to the Blockhead belay!”

References

[1] Slate Historical Section