Ascents in Europe by Lee Cujes

Absolute skin of the teeth!

Hard glassy crack through bulge. Felt 24.

Onsight solo in walking boots

100m of frictional, overbolted granite/gneiss. 5 pitches, climbed in 2.

Contrived

2nd shot. Brutal hard moves.

2nd shot. Screaming in pain. Finger shreading, they hurt for days afterwards.

That's what you get when you have to pay $119 AUS for a 20 minute taxi ride.

Hideous. Dogged the crux.

"Zis is one of the most beautiful climbs at zie cliff"

Sharp coral rock on this sector

Slabby arete overlooking the ocean

Man, this is a really crappy old cliff. Don't go here!

Epic alpine experience with a guide very late in the season, but we randomly nailed the weather and had a very memorable day. Huge pack with 2 sets of mountain boots made the cruxes touch and go. Climbed some of the shaded (frigid) pitches in gloves.

I waaaay ran out of draws. Took 20 and needed 30. Serious backcleaning action. The final transition from tufa chimneying to upper slab top-out was ... engaging!

Insane 40m roof, my hat is off to the bolter. What an epic that would have been.

Needs an extra bolt in the crux.

Got to the crux move on the onsight, 1 bolt from the top, 50m up. Just immense.

Fell off the final move again at the 50m mark. Gutted. Found better foot beta.

Top went into the sun but was well motivated to not fall again. 55m of epic steepness capped with a slabby wall crux move. Yowza! [4]

Goes on forever - pretty rad.

Had to fight like a bugger. Super dooper long, almost 50m.

More like caving than climbing. You can't really compare it to anything. My hardest OS on paper, and I did it in the sun, very un-me.

Hardest onsight fight in ages. 45m pitch, epic. 23 clips, I had 18 draws.

Had to hang all the draws on this monster in the quest for the mega extension.

Second go and actually fell just before the anchor on the first pitch. Smoked. Good fitness training though!

Questing for the extension.

On the way to the extension send.

A couple of pretty droppable moves on weird mini-tufa underclings and a cruxy clip. Took its pound of flesh from most suitors today.

Totally mega and well worth doing. Awesome.

With extension

I was dead positive I was on the 6a+, hence sneakers and a casual approach, which quickly turned into a gripping warm up. Just what the doctor ordered.

Broke a hold on the flash attempt. 2nd try. Thanks Jase for gearing up this monster.

Couple of nice pinches through the upper bulge.

Marathon effort to get the gear on this 55m monster. Took 19 draws and ran out.

At 55m, makes Crossroads look short. About 4 or 5 cruxes which I really didn't want to blow. Maybe the longest pitch I have done. Biggest on wall. [2]

New crag, so had to check it out. Will not be rushing back.

Yeah a wee bit sharp but still worth doing. Reminded me of the routes at Poets.

This makes a good thing even better with Thailand-style slot climbing on perfect stone. I fell at 3/4, pulled back on, and went to the top (50m pitch!).

The headwall of this was the thing I saw as I walked in. Without even looking at the guide this was what I wanted to climb. Super cool pocket sequences.

Some good moves, but when you need to use a different colour line on the topo because its so squeezed amongst the neighbouring lines, meh, not a fan.

Biggest fight of this trip so far. Full body tufa wrestling. 1,000,000 kneebars. Would not have been pretty to watch. FA gave it 7c+ in 2016, and gets 7c+ in the Panjika guide, but 7c in the Aris guide. Probably sits somewhere in the middle, who cares, epic line reminiscent of Kalymnos Panorama sector.

Looooong. Sneaks.

New route. Looooong tufa line. A little contrived down low as it shares some holds with the next route but overall very good. Kneebars.

Some tricky slab stuff down low and then graciously relents into steeper tufa pulling thank god.

Repeat. Was going for the new route Manou Chou which splits off this. However found myself too high and just kept going. Could touch the anchor but not clip. Thank god I've onsighted it previously.

Run up in sneakers to replace worn anchor carabiners.

This was off the charts good. The deep pockets in the upper overhung wall are too good to be true, but true they are.

Blasting out the roof on pockets, feet flicking left and right. Pretty super!

Nearly megaclassic due to the amazing dripping candlewax tufa pipes. You only see this on a few, rare routes on this planet. As for the climbing, a bit glassy and slippery, and hard to read. I fought super hard, throwing out my back in the process. Worth it.