The finale to Tom and I's 40 pitch day and boy it was a doozy.
A few months ago we had the idea to do a 40 pitch day, nailing as many multis as we could on Tibro and Beerwah. Not being able to travel makes a man do strange things!
We started the day at 4am in the Tibro climbers carpark and plugged our first cam into Blabbermouth at 5:15am. Climbing Blabbermouth in the dawn light was incredible
The rest of the routes at Tibro went down smoothly:
Ross Miller: Started 8:15, topped out at 9:45.
Line Of Credit: Started 10:30, back on ground at 11:30.
Troposphere: Started 12:00, back on ground at 13:40.
We transitioned to Beerwah in the afternoon, pulling onto Lhotse Flake 3:35pm (a little later than expected to be honest). My feelings about Lhotse's quality not-withstanding, it was supercool to simul climb most of it (micro traxions are a game changer!) and make the 9 pitches into 3. Linking the top 3 crux pitches into a monster 100m pitch, climbing by torchlight, running out of gear and fighting the rope drag monster was sick!
We finished the 5 raps of Lhotse at 8pm and started The Martian soon after; this is where the day went sideways.
Pitches 2/3 felt extremely tenuous on lead; the rock felt super skatey and it was hard to trust our hands and feet. Tom and I originally put this down to fatigue but about halfway through P4/5, Tom realised that the rock was wet from condensation! Nothing get's you gripped quite like climbing a bold friction slab on moist rock
At 10:30pm, we made the decision to retreat rather than push on. There is nothing to gain in the risk of climbing dodgy rock for the arbitrary goal of 40 pitches.
3 rappels later, we made it back to the ground at 11:20pm and then was back in Brisbane at 2am.
A Stella climb and an excellent way to get back into climbing after a few months of injury. Sat on the rope at the end to avoid further injury.. And also.. Could feel my calves burning! Saw a green tree snake and loved the swallows would highly reccomend to do this climb as a pure day of fun!
The cool evening temps (~9-10pm) caused the moisture in the air to condense on the rock, turning the lichen in to slippery death-slime.
Pitch 4 & 5, usually a pleasant ramble, were absolutely terrifying and we made the decision to abandon the goal of 40 pitches and get home safely.