Ascents by Paul Frothy Thomson having Distinct route

Early birthday present! What a rad outing. Like the Free Route, but with proper physical, burly climbing. The crux pitch is very sustained in the bottom half. Gale force winds made this a griping, shivering, barn-dooring experience.

P1 - Self-belay shennanigans after the belay got dumped by waves. After self-belaying to the end-of-pitch anchor, I fixed the rope there, and back-tracked to undo my self-belay anchor so Jared could rap all the way to the P2 belay from the mainland.

P2 - Hard fought, unchalked onsight. The top 5m is fierce arete slapping. I almost gave up at the last bolt as I struggled to clip mid-barndoor, but just squeaked it.

P3 - 4th shot total (including onsight attempt and a TRS lap). On my 3rd shot I fell off on tbe last move of the last hard sequence. Stacked techo climbing, with no shutdown crux.

3rd shot today (8th lap total over 3 days) placing gear on the send.

Almost botched it through the steep prow at the top when -pumped to blazes- I got the key cam stuck with only half the lobes in, and was unable to fix. In the end I just went for it anyway and committed to the runout, but I would not have wanted to fall!

I used 9 bolts and 8 bits of trad over the 40m, but there are other trad options available as well. Super steep climbing in an outrageous position, with an awesome mix of powerful and technical moves. Marred by some coarse rock, and wandery sequences (though I see the latter as a positive ).

Might be 26, but it usually doesn't take me 8 shots to climb a 26 these days, so who knows.

6 days of effort. The rock is Cosmic-esque quality, and the climbing is amazing, but as an "experience" its more "brutal" than fun IMO.

2 very different pitches.

P1 climbs like a steeper, harder and more sustained version of Kizashi (and is mostly on bolts).

P2 is all about the gritstone-esque insecurity, and is mostly on gear.

P3 is just an exit pitch

One of the last known great lines in the Blueys, and one of my proudest FA's to date. Exposed, scary, great rock, long, and with radical climbing (especially on the crux arete pitch). The crux in particular has some of the wildest arete-slapping/trickery that I've done in my entire climbing career.

Done over about 8 days of effort in total. I originally led the crux pitch as two shorter pitches (27 and 26 respectively) via a hanging belay, before coming back to eliminate the belay and do it properly.

With jengA. Belayed from the ground using a single 80m route. Only worked P2 to sort the moves. Linked P2 into P3 for a mega pitch testing mental and physical endurance. P1 - Onsight; P2 - Pink Point (ticked 5th shot, and continued into P3 without resting); P3 - Flash. What a route! P1 is okay. P2 is enjoyable bouldery fun, but P3 is utterly mindblowing through a roof, and steep slopey water scoops. A lot of effort to work, but worth the investment.

2 laps. Awesome moves, though a single move shut down both Emil and I. Would be an awesome 27 (totally in my style) even without this one nails move. Steep, technical face-climbing with a dose of spurt-wall slimper glory. Going-ground up was heart-stopping with the bad-condition expansions, and the moving peg in the expanding flake. Needs some TLC to be resurrected as a classic. I managed to find placements for a few small wires, and rack of aliens to Yellow size.

One more lap. Everything else but the crux is sorted... but no improvement on the crux... I give up. Great climbing. Stupidly cruxy and sandbagged. Rubbish bolting and the gear is annoying. Not 3 stars for the gramps, nor even for muline.

Tougher than expected. My beefy fingers rarely fit deeper than 1-pad in the crack, resulting in lots of back-2/3 finger locks, and 1-pad locks. Looks about Grade 23 when you rap past it... climbs much harder (mostly due to non-existent footers). 3 laps on TR, the first 2 of which were embarrassingly long. On my final lap, taking out the gear as I went, I managed to get it down to a single fall on the final hard sequence (but that's not as close to linking it as you might think, since this route becomes something of an enduro route for the red point crux). Aside from the epic to access it, the climbing is brilliant, on great rock, and with a "slow burn" (maybe 22/23 to get to the crux), followed by a long, intense crux. Probably softish 27 for me (but I'll re-evaluate when I tick it).

Top Rope Solo pitches 2 and 3 only. Not clean. Very different to the Free Route. More face featured, blocky and crack-y. Slightly worse rock, more intimidating location. P2 (26) is brilliant (especially the steep stemming out of the initial alcove) which gets harder all the way to the bouldery crux to gain anchors. P3 (27) is extremely hard for the 1st 1/2 and is tenuous, strenuous, thrutchy and powerful. I pulled past 2 moves I couldn't quite do. The upper half is gr23/24 thin crack climbing.

Some awesome, sustained climbing on great rock.

Unfortunately, a super key hold has snapped off between the 3rd and 4th bolt, making this move now grade 1 billion (I found a mcdougall around it, or you could simply traverse across from SCC higher up). The main slab section is gnarly and sustained, but freaking awesome. I never really figured out the move from the last bolt to the ledge (perhaps it traverses left to the arete?) I'd probably be willing to give it another go in the near future.