The weather forecasters got it right and this year’s BMC International meet (held over the week of 11th – 18th May) was a resounding success. The delegates and hosts were blessed with a full week of glorious sunshine, and much frenetic activity occurred out on the crags, including some superb early season Cloggy action and a rake of impressive ascents from the visitors.

Most notable was Nicolas Favresse from Belgium, who managed to squeeze in an incredible amount of climbing in six continuous days of cragging. Accompanied by Welsh host, Nick Bullock he tore through an amazing tick list of classic hard routes. Highlights included an onsight ascent of Authentic Desire (E7 6b) on Cloggy and a nearly-but-not-quite onsight of Nightmayer (E8 6c) on Dinas Cromlech where he took a massive swooping fall from the final hard section. Various other hard routes, such as Me (E6 6b) on Yellow Wall, Mr Softy (E6 6b) in Wen Zawn, Rust Never Sleeps (E6 6a) and Tonight at Noon (E6 6b) at Craig Dorys were also despatched with alarming alacrity, although Strawberries (E7 6b) at Craig Bwlch y Moch elicited two falls from Nico. That said, he did strip the gear and lead it cleanly straight after.

Ground Up’s intrepid cragger and host extraordinaire, Streaky Desroy spent an eventful week with two very talented Japanese climbers who dived head long into the North Wales climbing experience, pausing only occasionally whilst cruising up various classic routes to comment that it was “so scary”.

Local climber and Plas y Brenin instructor, Dave Rudkin summed up the atmosphere of the event: “It was amazing, we all climbed every single day, everybody was really going for it. The day I went up to the Cromlech, there was queue of people waiting to get on Lord of the Flies!”

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