a beautiful climb that could do with more traffic, possible new variant climbing past the anchor of melodrama and finishing at the anchors for no drama, would suggest that would bring the grade to around 20 with the ballsy moves high up
The route I took at the start felt so easy that it was almost rock scrambling up a ladder/stairs.. wasn't sure if it was even on-route to do that.. but decided that for the grade it was probably fine.
If you decided to climb the face between the 1st and 2nd bolts, you could easily upgrade the grade on this route by a few points, as it's pretty blank, and then has a little overhang you'd need to get over. (jw did the top part of it pulling through the overhang, though decided the bottom looked too challenging/contrived to bother)
Most of the rest of the climb was fairly easy/straightforward, with only a couple of points where I had to stop and think for a minute. Very reminiscent of some of the climbs up at Mount Alexandra in Mittagong.
There was one point maybe 3/4 up that had a nice little crack to climb for a metre or so, though it was way shorter than I would have liked.
The last move before the anchors is probably the crux, all 3 of us seemed to pause there for a moment considering our options. Compared to the rest of the climb, there didn't seem to be any particularly good options for hands/feet, and so in the end we just sort of mantled up on the less good holds.
Theres a nice platform to stand on up the top at the anchors, which makes it really easy to clip/clean.
When lowering down it might be worth clipping an extra quickdraw to the rope/your belay loop to keep you on the main line. I didn't, and at one point the rope slipped over the edge into the cave to the right, and I swung pretty hard out that direction. Wasn't too bad, but where the rope ended up felt like it was getting a lot of drag/friction on it as we lowered the rest of the way, so not really ideal for it.
This was a really nice/fun/easy climb to finish a long day, and long 3 day trip of climbing. Perfect confidence boost after the fear of retreating from
