by Mark Reeves First Solo of Untouchables, Dinorwic Slate Neil Dyer is a climbers´ climber. He has done many hard repeats androutes throughout the World and plays many of them down. Everything seemsto be V8 to him whether it is V12 or not. He is currently doing somelabouring in V12 Outdoors, Llanberis, close by to where he grew up nearthe Ormes. The local strong man is extremely understated and has climbedFont 8b, probably harder, but downgraded them all to V8.Whilst many people will try their arse off to get some form ofsponsorship, Neil despite his talents never has, despite being more than twicethe climber of many a tagged hound dog. I once witnessed him cruise I´m A BadBad Boy on the Ormes with a tatty alpine harness and rock bootsthat had been resoled a million times. He has repeated many hard routesbut never mentioned them, he is climbings enigma or Mr X. This week on his lunch break he soloed The UntouchablesF8aon the Rainbow Walls, 6 metres of laybacking and smearing on frictionless rock up an overhanging arete that Johnny Dawes first climbed in 1988 with 3 bolts for protection. Neil had walked from V12 Llanberis to the quarriesand top roped the line in his lunch break, a four mile round trip. He gotit dialled and soloed it before matter of factly return to Llanberis tocontinue the working day. A true ´working lunch´. Which for a verytechnical route given F8a can´t be a bad effort, seeing that he found hisown sequence!
