[UPDATE: Now with photos]
On the 26th of December North Wales resident Pete Harrison made a winter ascent of the 18m E4 6b Are you havin' it about the mammoths? in the Llanberis Pass, North Wales.
Harrison has renamed his winter version Are you havin' it about the wooly mammoths? and offered a winter grade of XI,10,making this the highest graded winter challenge in Wales.
Pete dry-tooled the first half of the route to reach a hanging icicle, passing several insitu pegs.
Commenting on the DMM Website he said:
"I didn't even know it was an existing summer line until I saw the pegs and looked it up in the guidebook afterwards."
The 1 star rock route lies on a small buttress close to the road, below the larger crag of Scimitar Ridge and was put up by local legend George Smith. The original name is in reference to a trip to Hueco Tanks, Texas, where the erosion on the rocks was jokingly put down to Mammoths rubbing themselves against the boulders.
Harrison, who was vocal in his outrage against the recent Millstone drytooling incident made the following caveat about his new route on the DMM website:
"It would be totally unacceptable in my mind to climb this wall without the hanging ice dagger in place."
Harrison has been extremely active in North Wales making several first winter ascents and also being involved in developing some otherwise unused areas of the slate quarries for bolted dry-tooling.
- Full news item with photos on the DMM Website.
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