Ascents in Pierces Pass West Side

Chickened out at the blank arete crux

Clean to the bolt. Eventually put together a sequence up the rather terrifying runout arete and into the crack above (at about 24). Came down to TR rehearse it before another lead attempt, only to realise I've broken THE key footer off. Eventually put together a new sequence (at AT LEAST 25)... But the crux of this is all disintegrating sand and breaking edges. Key holds are hanging by a few grains of sand. A key undercling made cracking noises every time I stood up into it. Any of the key edges (for hands) turned to more sand as I stood on them. Great climbing, but this route won't be here for long, and I'd be worried about trying for the tick, only to loose it with more breakage

Awesome climb. Jacindie ticked this thing. Nails crux. Top finger crack is one of the better in all the mountains.

Hideously bad. A disgusting bush-bashing wall-of-tree approach only sets the stage to this chossy, vegetated, dirty, mossy disaster. Probably the worst trad climb I've ever done. I don't actually know anyone I hate enough to send up this climb. Every pitch has about 5-10m of good climbing, surrounded by 35-40m of atrocious rubbish. Climbed on one of the hottest days of the year (at least this route is in the shade, I guess). Onsight all Even Pitches, Clean 2nd all Odd Pitches. P1 - Vertical gardening with the odd bit of loose rock thrown in for good measure; P2 - Extremely loose and vegetated vertical dirt/shrub climbing with minimal protection. The last 10m or so up the clean layback crack is okay; P3 - Shale start to dirt and vegetation, with some okay (through loose) climbing above through a series of bulges; P4 - Deathly moves through a barely protected shale roof, then up a pleasant steep (though friable) corner-crack; P5 - Great stemming with minimal protection marred by vegetated pox, leading to chossy rock through the roof (though the exposed chimneying moves are cool), and culminating with repellent dirt/vegation/moss/snappy corner-crack climbing above; P6 - The single worst pitch I've ever climbed in my life. Almost unprotectable vertical gardening up disintegrating vegetation and mud, broken up only by snappy, dirty, mossy rock.

2nded VW up first two ptches in one 60m pitch. 3rd and 4th pitch looked steep and chossy. Rapped off!

With Dude - horror walk out to road at night with one torch and misty drizzle

Did P1 only. Pretty crappy rock.

nice crack

Great crack climbing up cleanish line.

crap

With Taib. P1 - Clean Second. P2 - Onsight. Pretty good climbing, but a lot of rubbish rock. Both pitches have some pretty bold sections with tricky climbing on dubious gear and questionable rock. But both pitches also have their charm. Quite adventurous. Getting off the top was an epic (Taib sacrificed a prussik cord to sling 2 carrots and rap off that). Worthwhile IF you like this sort of thing.

Brilliant crack with only a little bit of bad rock which is avoidable. Perfect hands, to perfect off-hands, to perfect fist jams (it's like SWIMMING), to tricky roof and thin crack, with a nice technical thin crack finale. Might be soft at the grade, but it was thoroughly enjoyable as a pure crack climb. I made the roof crux hard by faffing around with gear, but got it sorted for the onsight. Very worthwhile.

Better than expected (and worth more than the 1 star in the current guide). P1 & P2 - 2nd Clean; P3 - Dog (fell at the main crux, battling sandy, muddy holds, though I essentially read the crux right); P4 - Onsight. Neil made a monster 60m pitch by linking P1 and P2 into a sustained face-climbing epic (with reasonable pro and rock) marred by a scarily chossy start. P3 is sustained corner crack climbing with a bouldery crux and very spaced pro. P4 is short, very steep corner climbing and punchy.

Epic walk in and walk out, amazing position, two scary shale traverses, one to remember!

Good climbing with a lot of bad rock

Have been really keen to do this ever since walking past it after doing Yileen canyon so it was cool to tick it off. Ended up being mostly a fist crack for my smallish hands so it was good to get some jamming practice in there. Had a bit of a moment at half height where I filled up otherwise bomber placements with all the wrong gear and got fairly rattled (#bumblylife) but apart from that it was pretty cruisy. Fairly comfy with a double rack but if you were to bring extras BD #3 would probably be the size.

Just over an hour from the carpark to base of cliff with some serious bush bashing. The scrambling to get to the base of the climbing is, in itself, actual climbing as well! I lead pitches 1, 3, 4. Ben lead the others with much froth. Rad day and big TRADventure. Ended up missing the correct abseil when walking off the top to come back down. We landed ourselves in Yileen Gully and canyoned our way out fishing the day with a 60m waterfall abseil. YEWWW!!!

Sketchy as - everything felt like it might snap off. Love a loose chunk of sandstone.👌

Shale ledge I near crapped my pants on. Had to be hauled arse up to a shithouse hanging belay.🤙

Up to the roof across on my knees painful as all hell being dragged across as second. Got to the small belay ledge which felt like my feet could have a bloody holiday. (Every other belay ledge was a freaking sketchy arse hanging off rock)

Can't remember what happened here but it sucked.

Hanging on crappy belay ledge again if you can call it that to do a nice stretchy move traverse to the right which was horrible or maybe im just too short whilst being pulled across the traverse feeling like id flip out off the corner and around the arete.

Overall ok climb but horrible to get out of. Found the descent gully. Tried to abseil down but 60m rope didn't reach. Had to reassess and hold on for dear life whilst retying rope onto a closer tree to get a few more metres in order to reach the ground.

Overall scary as hell climb for me as second!

awsome day out! first pitch has poor rock quality but it improves after that, though still be mindfull. opted to walk out takeing around 1.4 hours

Nice way to round the day out, with some engaging climbing. Death block belay appears in reasonable condition but there is some wear on the slings.

One of the most consistent carck corners I’ve seen around mountains. Some xantaria jugs on the approach pitch and soft rock, amazing adventure overall. Bring your goggles

A canyon and choss adventure day. Left car park at 745. Scrambled with much sketch up a landslide gully, hugged the cliff, negotiated an approach pitch that i dived into a little too hastily at about 920. The route in general is probably more aesthetic than it is good in movement but certainly has its moments going through the many roof traverses. Climbing generally gets better with height which was nice. Probably nothing harder than gr18 but the grade probably reflects the need to have quite a good temprament under big easy runouts and most importantly, the ability to discern between good holds and landmines. Yim got a head jam in p5 that he insisted on a photo of. Finished climbing at 2, somehow only made the car at 5 after a couple raps, a skinny dip in the creek and alot of swearing at broken branches. Then to cap it off a red belly black arked up at yim 50m from the carpark.

great route. just punted the crux as usual

Had several falls figuring out the moves up to the lip of the roof. The crack was loose finger size for me and I'm not good enough at jamming that size with steep terrain. Eventually got all the moves.

Seconded the two first pitches clean.

I started the lead up the 3rd pitch (23) but needed a take after barely making it across to the horizontal break after the first two carrots. It was actually already very difficult for me, especially with several holds wet, slimey, sandy and broken. Moving up from here was even hard for me to aid, and after taking so long to progress beyond the next bolt up, I decided to bail (down climbed using sling assistance on carrots and then traversed left along ledge to double rings on the climb over).

Pretty cool moves but I'd say the 23 pitch is more like grade 24/25.

Dirty and quite uneventful

This is a very fun route! The gear is good, the climbing on the upper two pitches is excellent if you are a corner conisuer.

Alec's first multipitch!

Pitch 1: and 2 are your standard mountains horizontal face trad. Onsite.

Pitch 3: I guess after the rain this week there was 5 key holds on the Crux of this pitch that were wet. Still climbable you just have to do a harder sequence. The crux is superfun on this pitch!

Fell off on the onsite. Fell off second shot due to the dampness Lowered to the base of the crux and went to the top so overlaping 1 sit.

Pitch 4: Another wet hold 😞 Second shot placing This was a rad corner pitch!

This route is still climbable even if the holds are damp!

Stoked to get the 24 pitch done on my 6th pitch of the day 🙌

First multi experience! Thanks to Mitch for throwing me in the deep end on this one!!

10/10 Choss. Crux move probably on pitch 2. Generally eats bigger gear, you wouldn’t be mad about taking 5 and/or 6. Long bush bash back to Bells line.

Did last pitch in the rain!