First ascent: Pitches 1-7 Mike Roberts and Roy Gooden, 1977
Pitches 8-9 Dave and Carless Freer, and Roy Gooden, 1978
Monteseel’s longest route, including nine pitches and approximately 200 metres of climbing, it traverses most of the Central Buttress. The climb was possibly opened in 1972 by Dave Cheesmond and Paul Bridgman using aid to avoid existing climbs. The current route follows sections of existing routes to eliminate any aid. Starts at the base of the Pot Boiler crack.
(1) Traverse across the Hot Plate face to the end of the No Thoroughfare traverse. Reverse this to reach the Fall Out ledge (12).
(2) Traverse past the tree and continue across the Hallucination face to the large flake on Pin Up. Reverse the Adam’s Apoplexy Variation traverse to stance on Adam’s Apoplexy (19).
(3) Move around the corner and drop down to reverse the Nog High traverse to the tree (13).
(4) Continue across the No Feet face and move around the corner onto the Think face. Traverse at the level of the fixed peg on Think to make a difficult handswing from a small layback hold to reach Adam. Move across the Cain face to stance above the start of Republican (19).
(5) Traverse as for the 1st pitch of Republican to stance on the big ledge (13).
(6) Climb as for Republic Left Break from the big ledge to the corner. Do not move up to the flake, but continue left on small holds to reach the end of the Pendulum traverse. Reverse this to reach the Pendulum stance (18).
(7) Traverse left and drop down to reach the Zig Zag ledge. Move to the end of the ledge and stance at the tree (13)
(8) Traverse across the face that forms the second pitch of Zig Zag to a stance above a roof. Reach down and left to a layback hold which enables one to reach a handrail under the roof. Continue left past Top Heavy to stance near Pilgrim’s Progress (15).
(9) Climb the open book just to the right of Pilgrim’s Progress.