Ascents in Northern Group by John Pitcairn

P5 for exit. A touch more rain and wait, a near solo from Grant, more rain at topout, quite a lot of wind, a long slippery walk down.

Terrific pitch, steepish with great exposure and good gear, worth 2 stars. Get on it.

This is a weather report, not a climbing log. Another shifty looking day but bugger it, we're on. P1 only for access. Waited out a couple of showers at the base. A small stream crossing en route and some wet stuff on the right of the chimney.

A good fun ramble, with nice exposure on the P4 traverse. Grant ran 2 & 3 together on double ropes and long slings. A swarm of bees flew by, parting around me at the P4 belay. Pitch 5 is rubbish.

Pumpy indeed, and hot rock made it very sweaty. Good gear, and short enough to clip crux cams direct.

After Anna's Kachoong siege photo session. Deliberately didn't watch Frankie and Anna earlier, managed to make the left face awkward with an undercling traverse then didn't protect the right face traverse enough (ie at all). I'm told this is great, and none of the moves are hard, but a traverse through a corner really doesn't float my boat much.

Rock paper scissors got me the lead, and it's a great one. Terrific moves and jamming through the flake line lead to a easy and exposed juggy arete to finish.

Just the first pitch, access to Nativity after rapping down Touchstone. Excellent full body action from Grant.

Spent 2 hours thrashing from the curtain wall carpark up various bushy gullies looking for the path to this, failed and wound up at the transmitter, found the anchor and rapped in. 2 excellent pitches, balancy traversing, corner crack bridging then face climbing that is like an easier version of I'm a Little Asteroid. Worth the effort.

Grovelled up the 2 little approach gullies to find another party had nipped around us, had to wait for them to get up the first pitch, during which time ShiChang nearly killed me walking out on the big tippy block I was sitting under. First pitch is good, then ran 2 and 3 together, but a bit meh. Skipped the final dogleg and punched straight up through the overlap to make it more interesting, one hard move at maybe grade 16?.