Ascents of Central Direct

P1 felt very hard for 18 (probably closer to 20) especially the moves around the diagonal left leaning ledge. We belayed from the same anchors as you use for the rap descent.

P2 looked quite hard up to the first bolt which was about 5m off the belay, managed to put gear in the break and fiddle some interesting gear into a hole before getting to the bolt. There was a fair run out to the next bolt which I didn't see until it was right in front of my face and then I could see no more bolts. I moved up carefully and still didn't see any more bolts or gear so decided to head up what looked like an easy looking ramp to a crack/corner where I hoped there would be gear. Luckly I found some which was nice because I was about 12m run out at this point. I climbed the arete of the corner and turned the small roof before making it to the left hand side of the large cave where I set up a belay with the minimal gear that I had left (only took a small amount as I was expecting bolts). At this point we had a read of the guide and figured that we were at the top of pitch 3 and had somehow skipped a whole pitch.

Last pitch was pretty much as described, traversing out of the sandy cave and crimping on sandy ledges was not fun but we made it to the top in one piece.

A great adventure climb up a sea of rock, just don't come expecting a grade 18 sport climb, think grade 20 trad climb with thought provoking run outs and you will be fine (we found a couple more bolts that we missed on rap but they were fairly hidden).