Tough adventure climb to finish the trip! Approach took over an hour, mostly without a track. Wear long pants for the prickles. The crack (bottom 1.5 pitches) had a slimy film on all the holds making it difficult, but still climbable. Very humid day, but not sure it would feel that much different on a better day. Climbing was very consistent at the grade for the entire route. Rock quality was quite average in the crack but was reasonable on the face. Rapped on a 70m rope thanks to a fixed thread near the top of P1 (which is more 40m than 35). 11 hours boat to boat including restaurant dinner, an hour on top admiring the view and re-climbing part of P1 to free a knot from the rope!
An adventurous route not for all tastes. I appreciate the work of the guy who bolted but it is weird. I think a softer route following the ridge all the time would make more sense and would keep a lower grade all the way up.
P2 is hard and awkward. There is a mallion on the last bolt below the crux so you can see that people has bailed out before. The crux is a overhanging off wide crag with massively sharp rock that you don't really want to jam on. Very physical and quite dangerous (falling means bouncing inside the chimney/off-wide).
After that everything is quite straightforward with a bit of complicated bolt finding.
Lower offs are usually one mallion with some old tat connecting the two bolts. Unfortunately we didn't have anything else to replace it.
Approach is also terrible. Maybe following the route described in the guidebook correctly takes less but it took us 1h30m in (following one of the ridges) and the same out (straight down, mainly on scree). Don't go straight up or down, it is terrible.
- with
Hilary
