Ups and downs

I’ll keep this short. My back’s killing me from hauling too much gear, and my tea’s going cold in the jetfoil. I wish I’d brought a proper cup. Couscous floating in your brew isn’t pleasant.

Bad night. The tarp flapped like a wounded bird. I tried to ignore it for hours, then finally had to get out of the sleeping bag and pack it away. Should’ve done that earlier.

Today was meant to be the big push — haul everything and get established high on the wall. It didn’t quite go that way.

I hauled to the pitch two belay, then set off for what the topo called pitch five, aiming for a sheltered bivy. Above that the wall steepens hard.

I’m convinced the topo was written by someone who’d never climbed the route. I spent all day on one bloody pitch. The last ascent took ten days. I can see why.

I drifted off route at one point — properly scary — then finally committed to the groove system I’d ignored earlier because it looked too grim and too loose. It was both.

Biggest moment of the day: I stood up onto what looked like a tipped-out Camalot 4. As I weighted it, one side of the crack began to prise away from the wall. The flake started to move. The cam opened. Somehow that stopped it levering further, and it held just long enough for me to downclimb onto my last piece. I haven’t been that scared in a long time.

The topo describes a section as “lost.” Sixty metres later I ran out of rope five metres from the belay. I’m guessing they meant “long.”

Time was running out. I didn’t want to bivy below pitch five, so I fixed the ropes and rapped back to pitch two to lower the bag. Future me may not thank present me.

Then, at pitch two, after rehearsing the haul and knot pass in my head, I realised I’d left my jumars at the high point — in the tag bag.

Luckily I never travel without a backup system. Two Tiblocs and up I went. Twice as fast, partly from efficiency, partly to punish myself.

So I’m back at my usual perch. Not sure what the weather will do tomorrow. If it holds, I’m a third of the way there. At least.