Castle Inn Quarry

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 helin 07 Sep 2020

Castle Inn Quarry 

Went today but the main face is closed. There's been some rockfall on the left hand side but sign says whole of main face is closed. 

 Derek Furze 07 Sep 2020
In reply to helin:

Thanks for heads up.  I knew the car park was shut, but thought climbing was OK

gezebo 07 Sep 2020
In reply to helin:

How much rock has fallen? It’s a pretty solid lump as crags go. 
 

I know that years ago the (then) new owners were not keen on climbers for a variety of reasons. Would this be an excuse to finally shut it down? 

 danm 07 Sep 2020
In reply to helin:

From the RAD:

May 2020. Conwy Council (the landowner) have informed us that the car park below the cliff is currently closed and part of the main face is closed for climbing and is cordoned off due to unstable rocks/rockfall issues.

 AdJS 07 Sep 2020
In reply to helin:

We climbed there yesterday, but on the side walls. There were quite a few folk climbing on the main wall, although not on the routes immediately below the rock fall.

1
 jezb1 07 Sep 2020
In reply to AdJS:

> We climbed there yesterday, but on the side walls. There were quite a few folk climbing on the main wall, although not on the routes immediately below the rock fall.

WTAF is wrong with people?! The signage is pretty flipping clear and North Wales is full to the brim with climbable rock and yet people are happy to risk getting the crag closed. 

That combined with parking on the road instead of going to the nice parking spot minutes away is a flipping sad state of affairs.

1
 y ddraig fach 07 Sep 2020
In reply to helin:

We also climbed at Castle Inn yesterday. When we arrived there were red marker posts laid out on the car park, clearly indicating where you shouldn't be climbing.

We spent an hour or so on Taid's Wall and Wilderness Wall, and when we returned the red marker posts had been moved and there was a couple climbing Route 2. 

In reply to jezb1:

If the whole of the main face is restricted then it would be great if the RAD could be updated to reflect this.

We went there last week, (via recommended parking/approach) having read the RAD and UKC notes. As expected we arrived to find some low crowd control barriers shielding part of the main face as far as about School Mam/Middle Muddle. This was below an obvious rockfall out of a chossy gully on the left. There were a few blocks on the ground. Pretty clear where the rockfall had happened. This tallied with the RAD wording - "...part of the main face is closed for climbing and is cordoned off...".
Further along was a BMC sign about no climbing between red markers. One red marker was upright on the far left of the face. The other was lying on the ground in a nonsensical place, nowhere near the rock, clearly not where it started and obviously having been kicked into the long grass. We had a good look around for a hole where it might have been hammered in but found nothing.
We reasoned that if the whole face was banned, the sign would have just said that, so the most likely place it would have originally been put was probably somewhere near the end of the cordoned off area.
Looking for reassurance, we decided to investigate further so wandered along the crag until we found some locals who confirmed that the unaffected part of main wall right of Cakewalk was being climbed on as normal. More locals arriving later confirmed this. Figuring we'd gone through due diligence we climbed as far along as Route 3 but didn't venture any closer.

If it's the whole face, maybe we should be writing that on the signs and the RAD to save anyone else from following the same logic that we did. Could someone add words like "no climbing between Route X and Route Y"? If access is at risk it's probably worth being a bit more definitive.

Wasn't trying to upset anyone. If I've done a bad then mea culpa but "part of" does imply it's not "all of". We went to a lot more trouble to try to work it out than many people would so if we still managed to get it wrong, how clear does it need to be?

1
OP helin 08 Sep 2020
In reply to Longsufferingropeholder:

It was unclear, I wish I'd taken a photo now - I did ask a few people, including some instructors from PYB who said the whole of the main face was closed. I can't say whether this is correct or not but no one was climbing on it whilst we were there.

A local couple admitted they had climbed on the main face Saturday (as everyone was) but they weren't going to again to avoid jeopardising access.

It would have been easy to 'ignore' the second red post to the right of the crag and climb the routes to the right of the barrier - will email the BMC rep so they can clarify as would be a shame not to climb those routes if you can

OP helin 08 Sep 2020
In reply to helin:

The BMC rep has updated the RAD:

May 2020. Conwy Council have informed us that the car park below the cliff is currently closed and all of the front/main face is closed for climbing and is cordoned off due to unstable rocks/rockfall issues.  The rockfall issues extend beyond the obvious loose stuff in the gully/groove on the left. A geo technical survey also identified potentially unstable material above the main face itself.  The closed area is marked by red posts. Some climbers have been moving these posts  and the barriers- please do not do this, as this risks future access. 

He says its only temporary so hopefully climbers will respect this. 


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