Tarquin’s Tryfan Ten

El and I picked up Tarquin for a day of scrambling on Tryfan. We caught the 11:25 bus from Bethesda and managed a cheeky drop-off at the base of Tryfan.

After a 5-minute walk in—during which a super low A400M flew overhead—we arrived at the bottom of Milestone Buttress, ready to start our first scramble.

Milestone Scramble (3) ⬆️
Milestone Gully (2) ⬆️
Milestone Continuation (3) ⬆️
Bastow Buttress (2) ⬆️
Nor Nor Grooves (1+) ⬇️
Nor Nor Buttress (3+) ⬆️
Little and North Gullies (1) ⬇️
South Buttress (3) ⬆️
Little and North Gullies (1) ⬇️
Pinnacle Rib Route (3+) ⬆️
The North Ridge (1) ⬇️

The routes were all awesome, with highlights being: Milestone Continuation, which featured a lovely line of rock; Nor Nor Buttress, which had a really good first half; and South Buttress, the most interesting route of the day with its aretes, cave, chimney, and a lot of wind!

Finally, Pinnacle Rib Route felt pretty special. I’ve climbed the VD route here multiple times, so the final section, where the climb converges with the scramble to reach the incredible rock formation, felt fantastic.

During the day, El completed her 50th Steve Ashton Scramble (South Buttress) 👏

Our final descent was down the North Ridge, which we were convinced was scramble 10 (until Tarquin wrote them down and found we’d done 11). We caught the bus back at 19:20. In total: 7.2 hours, 5.2 km, and 1660m of ascent.

A superb way to spend a bank holiday Monday!