The reward

For those that have been following my posts you will know that Craig and I don’t bother with birthday presents, instead opting to take each other out for a climb.  Craig jested that maybe I should find a climb that is the same grade as half my age, and I knew exactly what he was aiming at.  KGB is a long roof system with a hard move to get over the lip, I’ve never even contemplated it and nor has it ever drawn my attention or even interested me.  But it holds some strange fascination with Craig, and my response was climbing grades don’t go up in halves.  So if you are keen you can work out how old I turned just last week:

It seems like it has been a long time since we have had more than three of us out for a climb at the same time.  As this week progressed the number of interested people grew, and not due to my celebrations I might add as that was not divulged until today.  Before anyone else turned up Craig and I arrived in another half an hour earlier than I did last week.  In part because that is how Craig and I roll, but also because it was looking to be a bit warmer today.  As I type this it is close to 28 degrees outside.  Despite Craig’s best efforts to convince me that KGB would be worth a look I had already set my sights on other routes:

This resulted in me steering him to set off up the first pitch of Sirius, which would then get me access to upper wall where I intended to climb the second half of Delving Devoids.  The lower half of Delving Devoids is 25, too much for me to contemplate, but the upper thin seam goes at 18 and is a gnarly trad lead with sparse gear and a long runout to test the nerves.  There are not many people I would send up this seam on lead.  Howsie and Rongy are two, as both of them like me love this stuff.  Today for some reason I felt like I needed to test my nerve on what some might call the more sketchy trad lines:

It might be to give me the nerves to complete my long standing project at the Organ Pipes, I’ll need to get back there some day soon. Back to today and during the first two climbs the others turned up. And introducing in alphabetical order, so as not to upset anyone, we were joined by Alan, Andrew, Howsie, Jaime and Rongy. They had settled in at the Fat Chance Area with two top-rope setups on Out of Thin Air and Setting Sun. Now you may be thinking “pah” top-roping. But Alan is nursing most likely broken ribs, Andrew hasn’t climbing in way too long and Jaime has never lead climbed and in fact declared that she “has done very little climbing”:

So for Craig’s second lead he plumped for Tom Thumb direct, allowing us to be a bit social and catch up with everyone.  He cruised up this line without breaking a sweat, and I subsequently followed up while the three stooges top-roped and Howsie and Rongy ducked round the corner.  If you haven’t already guessed Howsie was eyeing up the grade 20  called Real Woman Accept It For What It Is, which beat him down last weekend.  This time he was on fire, and by the time I had followed Craig up he was already up it and smiling from ear to ear.  And rightly so as that’s another 20 he can tick off his list:

While there was much banter to be had, Craig and I snuck off for my second climb and in keeping with my first choice I went for A Pocket Full of Nothing.  It might seem a weird name to give a climb but when I put it up I wanted to call it Hollow Promise but there is a climb with that name in the area already, so I chose Empty Pockets but the same applied for that too.  Hence I gave up and went for this long and convoluted name.  It has a sketchy, slightly overhung headwall and near the top of it you have to somehow stick to a big sloping pocket while fiddling with gear.  I find it a really nervous position and this time I took a fall, but fortunately after fiddling the gear in.  Going back down I got it clean with arms bursting:

The gang had moved a top-rope to allow a bit of traditional corner/chimney climbing up Fat Crack.  I recall some chat about who had climbed it in proper trad style, but I will leave Alan (who bridged it) and Jaime (who back and footed it) to resolve that discussion.  While the three top-ropers were playing on that, it seemed that Craig and Howsie were about to race each other up the Hope Buttress.  Before the race could begin the others wandered over and Andrew was pouring cups of tea while Jaime was handing out thick slices of fruit loaf with lashings of butter, it felt like a proper tea party:

When the two leaders set off it was pretty obvious that Craig would win, due to being on Hope while Howsie was tackling his second grade 20 of the day, Faith.  It seemed that they got close the top at the same time, but that is where Howsie slowed down.  So much so that Craig was able to set up his belay and I was able to follow up.  I found Howsie still pondering the blankness above.  Eventually he went for the thin and delicate crux sequence, which is not obvious and if you falter for too long on the small crimps it’ll spit you off, as Howsie found out:

On his second attempt he was looking good until he realised that I was standing on his next fingertip sized crimp (above).  It was politely pointed out to me by Craig, and once I moved my foot Howsie made use of it and then worked his way to the top looking pretty nervous the whole way.  After he topped out, Craig and I set up another top-rope on Hope, for the threesome to play on as we left them once more to it to find gnarly trad route number three for me.  Blubber Boy is a classic thin slab, and like the other routes is a tad runout this time above two micro-wires.  Today it felt awesome every hold felt good, and I even stopped half way up holding on by my fingernails to take an image of yet another group walk past:

Today there were two organised groups out, one not so big but the other had a legion of orange helmeted troops.  That along with a few other recreational climbers and of course us resulted in the place being covered with ropes.  On our return to base camp and as the sun was making it’s way over the crag the top-rope on Hope was being pulled, and we were considering our options.  It seemed that during this time Rongy and Howsie had slunk off and Rongy had bagged the Booze Bus, a route Howsie will need to lead in 2021 if he continues with his challenge, and better still Howsie had tried Faith for a second time and got it clean, top work indeed:

I had already thought of a climb for Craig to jump on, being Inner Space.  There were several reasons for this not least that it is great climb, I know he really likes it, there was still shade and it was also one of the few areas without ropes hanging down the walls.  I was interested to observe that while I may get a ribbing for not putting people on belay until they have got their first piece of gear in, as I went about my usual practise none of the motley crew even considered spotting Craig.  Standing back far enough to avoid being hit by his body should he fall, and watching with an intensity that might have burned a hole in his back:

Halfway up Craig started to falter, above him was a long runout should he go direct that I knew he would want to.  Indeed he went for it but then got spooked, as his arms were tiring and the next piece of gear wasn’t too his liking.  Impressively he managed to down climb to the piece well below his feet, so as to avoid a lead fall.  Rongy had already setting off up Waterfall Second Folly direct, with Howsie belaying so I took the floppy end and polished off Inner Space.  Rongy and I belayed atop with Howsie and Craig coming up second, as the first dolphin sighting of the day occurred.  I don’t think we will ever tire of sitting atop Wilyabrup looking out to sea, regardless of whether there are dolphins, whale or even waves to be seen:

Now another reason I was so keen to get Craig to climb Inner Space was due to Jaime, who “has done very little climbing”, having walked up the four routes on which a top-ropes had been set.  This included a couple of tricky crux sequences that she just seemed to cruise past.  Inner Space did make her falter a couple of times, but again there was nothing that really seemed to put her off her stride.  So today, while both Alan and Andrew have very valid reasons for not climbing as smoothly as they once did, it did feel like Jaime was showing them the ropes.  That said with climbing some days you are on form and other days it just doesn’t click, but regardless of that just being out there is reward enough: