Brave Dave's Guide To Bryant's Gully

My name's Brave Dave. I am once again at the entrance of Bryant's Gully. They're doing the very steep slope up to it. It's a beautiful day, it's overcast, it's warm and dry. However, Bryant's Gully, being what it is, feels soaking wet. Loads and loads of slippery rocks. This is just for me to get over and up onto Gliddivower and I've got myself a whole list of scrambles that I want to do today. I don't know if I'll manage them but I'll give it a good shot. Let's get on with it. Liking these dry sides makes a change from other times I've been up here. One word to describe that. I don't think this part of the gully sees the sun very much. So careful around this bit. If I break a leg or an ankle up here I'm in a lot of trouble. I'll tell you what, these Zambolan shoelaces don't help much either. They're great boots but for some reason whoever designed them put a decimal point in the wrong place when it came to laces length and they're 10 times too long. Why on earth are they this long? There's no more holes for them to thread through. Even if you like triple knot them they're still all over the place. Okay let's try and make most of these dry bits on this side. That's what we like, dry rock. Let's cover a bit of ground. Oh it's satisfying coming up here at good speed. I've just been unlucky with the streaming the last few times I've been here. I remember the first time I was up here I didn't have a clue what to expect. As you can imagine you don't know what's ahead. It's pretty nerve-wracking as you realise you're just getting deeper and deeper into this tired wasp. It is muggy as hell. Very humid up here. Oh wow, right. Not a lot of grip for my feet. I'm gonna have to do a pull-up. Basically got nothing to push my feet off. Oh that's risky. See I don't want to slide off that. It's a good three meters drop off the end of there. Some wet rock. That is my only handhold. Oh yeah, come on. Yes. Oh ----, left foot's going. Oh thank you. That's a little bastard that. Up on this patch of grass. I can chill for a little bit, maybe eat something. Crib goch nice and clear. Look at the view. The black water slide of moss. So that part of the gully that I came up before, up to that patch of grass, I class that as section one of Bryant's Gully. I think there's three sections. It's very distinctive, very tall, very narrow, a lot of water coming through because it's so narrow. Very few escape routes and a lot of decent little climbs along the way. So that's section one done. We're now on section two. It opens up a bit, gets wider. There's still some narrow parts where you can't escape out the sides, but generally it's a lot less enclosed than those very intimidating cliff edges down there. Very smooth side this. Not the best handholds around here. Very smooth. Okay that's good. Like that. Lots of thistles here, left and right. Meaning you have to go straight up the middle, which is a bit wet. It's a nice narrow bit. Oh ----, it's spiky. Oh yeah, that's a proper little gully that. At this bit you have to climb around it. You've got that side back around because you're not getting anywhere up that. I class this wedge boulder as the end of section two. Start section three. To get over this, which is quite straightforward and you bridge this gap. Oh, I say that, everything's wet on that side. This ace little gully part, this is the start section three, which is the rocky section. Spiky, shattered rocks all over the place. If you're doing this with someone else, this is the part where you have to look out for who's behind you because it'd be quite easy to knock someone loose. There's a lot of shattered pieces up here, look. Loads of them, like that. It just breaks off. Best to climb parallel to each other rather than one above and one below. But when you're by yourself, shoot up it. There are easier ways around this part. I didn't come here to do the easy route. I love this jagged cliff edge. Hoorah! Still got a lot to go, like. Just a little bit left. I haven't been filming, but I've just followed the gully until it kind of opened up and stopped. Very nearly at the top now, so that's good. Let's get over the top, have a look at the view and then I can start the actual day of scrambling because I have a hell of a lot more to go yet. A bit of loose scrape here. Ta-da!