Begehungen in Iliad Buttress von Paul Frothy Thomson

Repeat. Reclimbed with a view to ticking the crux pitch - which I did! Crazy windy today, which added some extra spice to all the steep thugging.

With Neil Monteith. 3.5 hours car to car. Out there! P1 2nd Clean (easy trad corner); P2 (23) - Onsight (hard and scary traverse, tricky mantle and corner, then pumpy steep ironstone jugs up an exposed arete); P3 (22) - 2nd Clean (steep start, then short but intense face climbing with hard moves); P4 (24/25?) - Dog (impossibly steep climbing up a prow with lots of pumpy and powerful moves over the void. Too damn tired for the onsight on this one). P5 (18) - 2nd Clean (short broken-up face pitch)

Much harder than it looks. I thought I'd knock this over pretty quickly, but ended up taking 3 shots and quite a few falls trying to sort out the crux ground-up. Quite strenuous and technical, and with only 1 real way to climb it. The gear is okay, but not great. Some small C3s and a double rack of small-ish wires would be an advantage.

Repeat. P1 only to get to the ledge at the start of P2. P2 was then climbed via the Trojan (23) variant start for the FA of that pitch. The first pitch has cleaned up nicely, and was genuinely pleasant to lead.

With Neil (who brought pruning shears for the journey). Mostly enjoyable old-school trad romp, with minimal bad rock and only 10m or so of vegetation in the entire climb. Could be really good with repeats (Neil did his best to clear vegetation and loose rock). P1 - Easy, with a nice (short) crack, and a vegetated finish. P2 - Tricky move to initial run-out, then nice crack to belay. P3 - Great, challenging moves to get started, then nice corner crack. P4 - Funky corner system in a great position