Ascensioni in Peretele Gălbinelelor

First time on a wall route I didn't aid my whole way up on (and tbh, I'm not sure Suhardul Mic counts that much as a wall). Love.

Spoilers ahoy

Approach was on Galbinele valley and Hornul dintre Fire.

Pitch 1 is a classical alpine chimney, fun stemming, not really any useful pro but this isn't really fall territory either.

Pitch 2 also an easy slab crack, nothing much to say. First two are approach, really.

Pitch 3 is where the fun begins. After a start that's either bouldery (official version) or a bit of a finesse traverse to the right (our version) you do a slabby traverse to the right to an oblique overhanging crack where a big old peg is visible. We clipped into it, creating mucho rope drag for the rest of the pitch, then downclimbed the traverse and headed straight up on less pumpy terrain until the bolt at the beginning of the second crack. Then started the pumpy overhangy part (topo said good holds, I broke a couple of them before saying screw it and starting to pull on quickdraws). Crux is a slightly bouldery exit out of the overhang using a crack to the right, that we felt is a bit spicier than the claimed 6/6+ . Can easily be aided through with the use of a 0.5 friend, however (the only mobile we ended up using). After that, it's easy terrain up to the belay

Pitch 4 is long and well protected (about 20 pegs/bolts) and we only had 13 quickdraws on us so we ended up splitting it in 2 (there's a belay station from Don Corleone accessible from it). Pitch 4.1 was lots of slabby crack, basically, with a few careful traverses, and pitch 4.2 started with an easy slab walkup to the left and then a well-protected few meters up with an exit between a few boulders that would make linking this with p5 a bit iffy, I think

Pitch 5 is short but not easy - after a slab traverse to the left you head up on a system of cracks on a slightly overhangy background. Secondary crux of the route - it's far less pumpy than the initial one, but unlike p3 this isn't on jugs but requires balance, finesse feet and some rather sinuous dance steps. Had we but worlds enough and time, I'd have loved to work this out like a sport route since it's right at the limit of my rotpunkt ability and very much my style, but I had a train to catch and the whole of Galbinele valley to descend on a still iffy ankle so if a move wouldn't go on the second try I pulled on the quickdraw for the third and moved on.

Retreat was by rapping down (I had left my trekking sticks at the Costila refuge and had to get them back) - first 3 raps would've worked on a single 60m rope, if a bit on the edge of it, 4th one needs maybe 70m of rope, and 5th needs 2 60m ropes stretched to the limit and reaches a peg one can also do a not-very-standard short rap off non-vertical terrain to the valley bottom to avoid a bit of downclimbing. Then we descended off the Galbenele Valley main line, which is pretty full of scree from this year's earlier rockfall off Tavanele de Argint

Chickened out on the lead attempt, but what I did end up leading is still way more leading than I ever did in my life on non-sport terrain up until yesterday At least I didn't pull on any draws except one on my abandoned p11 lead attempt.

Mostly used in situ pro (it's quite good, a mix of chemical bolts, old pitons and trees). Carried some friends (to look cool in pictures, according to my partner ), ended up placing a #1 on p7, could have used some on p8 and 11 had I led them.

Pitches 1-6 are easily doable in boots, with 3 and 6 being just non-roped bushwalking. P1 is an easy and straightforward conglomerate slab, to get you used to the style - artificial pro is a bit sparse but the terrain is easy and there's plenty of trees. P2 is mostly a traverse, and the UIAA 5 crux is very well protected and smear-based so don't lose the boots just yet. The P4 belay apparently is on bolts somewhere but we belayed off a tree - this makes it a bit longer than 60m and required a few meters of simulclimbing to get to the P5 bolt belay, but that was on easy terrain on both ends so nbd.

P7 is where the real climbing starts, nice balancy vertical crack, well-protected. On 60m ropes, it's easily linkable with P8, which is another, slightly harder, vertical crack right above it (there's an easier looking crack to the left but there's no in situ pro). This gets you out of needing to use the piton belay between them, but I chickened out - a bit shamefully, since I ran it clean and quickly as a second, which means that it should have gone French-free with a bit of patience and testicular fortitude Back on the lead for P9, fun traverse, passed the lead back to Andrei for P10 to save up on time (it's UIAA 2-3 but long and bushwhacky, so, on an already quite-slow lead, better pass it to the guy that's been there before ). Attempted to lead P11, ended up chickening out at the crux and passing it to Andrei as well. Here's what went wrong: the pitch starts with a slightly more airily protected dihedral than the previous vertical or close-to-vertical portions, and while it's easier than the rest, it'll still stick to the back of the mind of baby leaders like me. Crux has 2 alternatives. Left is a 45deg friction slab, right is an underclingy boulder move that existing topos and my partner described as 'harder, but the one you should try'. I get to the piton that marks the roads diverging and rather freak out as for some reason my backbrain decides it doesn't trust this particular one, I don't see any existing pro on the boulder move and it's apparently the harder one, so let's try the friction slab but the 3m to the next piton seem infinity so I make a couple of moves, turtle back to the piton, then Andrei asks me to get back down since we're kinda late already and I do so. The solution for this shit would have been taking a rest of a few good breaths at the piton, sticking with the initial undercling plan, using one of the small friends I had on my harness to protect the move if I really worried and then busting the move (which is easy) and finding a gd piton right after it lol. In close enough range that I could have back-cleaned my friend to minimize drag, too. Anyway, Andrei linked this pitch up with the following (a straightforward UIAA2 slab) and passed the lead back for the last pitch, which is a bit friable but easy climbing even in boots. Existing topos say UIAA 5+ but it's really, really not.