Are You Having It about the Woolly Mammoths 28m XI 10 ***A sensational winter test piece featuring sustained strenuous and technical climbing on small holds up a continuously overhung wall. It takes the compelling hanging ice-dagger to the right of Esgair Maen Gwyn and requires exceptional conditions to form, when formed it is obvious from the road. The line is based on the E4 6b ‘Are You Having It about the Mammoths’ and leaves this route at the top horizontal break to gain the large hanging ice-dagger at 15m. The gear is good except for at the start where an ankle-snapping boulder lurks, there are 3 pegs (which were placed by the summer-route’s first ascensionists) - the first 2 of these can be backed up with good gear.Start a few metres left of an old ring peg at 5m (which is not used). Climb straight up to a slanting break and follow this rightwards to the base of a vertical crack, climb the crack with difficulty to another horizontal break. Move right to gain the hanging ice, pull over onto a sloping ledge and continue up the ice pillar above. Belays are a long way back and are difficult to arrange.Pete Harrison & Simon Frost, 26th December 2010. (Ground-up, no rests and no prior knowledge of the route or the wall. I’ve no doubt whatsoever that it warrants grade X 10 at least, I think it merits XI because of the sustained nature of the climbing but only further repeats will tell.) (photo in summer on p.160 of the new Llanberis guide).NB. In light of the recent misguided activities at Millstone it's worth pointing out that this route is an obvious winter line (the 15m ice pillar hanging down the cliff gives it away) on a damp and unpopular cliff, but it would be totally unacceptable in my mind to climb this wall without the large hanging ice dagger in place. Any attempts to climb this route in anything other than the exceptional conditions which we encountered would be a negative step in my view – this definitely is not the cliff for practising dry-tooling. Practise if you must on the many dedicated M routes in the area and be there when conditions come in. (PH)
