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TR: Alive in a Bitter Sea (Katoomba Cliifs) 8-Dec-2016 At 10:01:01 AM PThomson

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G'day Warwick,

Glad you enjoyed the blog, and thanks for posting here. It's always great to hear from the FA (especially about something obscure like this route). In answer to your question about the photo of you: it was actually David Gray who dug it up. I almost feel obliged to to do another lap on Bitter Sea so I can rock some spandex of my own.

I didn't add or move any of the carrots (except by a few centimetres where the rock necessitated). It's all like-for-like, merely glue-in stainless with Ramset 801 now.

As I said in this thread and in my blog, I was inspired by your piece of Real Estate when I first saw it (while climbing Genghis Khan), and years later, it's appeal continued because it was obscure, and heady, and inspiring. I'm definitely not strong enough to TICK it ground-up (onsight), though KNOWING what the route comprises of now, I feel like I might've been able to have an "attempt" ground-up (but I suspect it might've been a dog-fest, and I probably wouldn't have brought enough #4 Cams).

The lack of ground-up ascents might also be because every description of your routes on this face suggest rapping the line to inspect it, and usually with a paragraph or two about how bold, committing, and possibly dangerous the routes are. Suffice to say, I was intimidated at the notion of doing them without inspection. A positive aspect about the time I invested to inspect and replace the bolts, is that I felt compelled to stick with the route in order to tick each of the pitches (since 'd already invested a lot of time, I really wanted to see it pay off).

At any rate, it was an engaging journey up a spectacular slice of geology consisting of a style of climbing that appeals to me... and it felt like a great way to cap off a 2 year climbing odyssey before returning to work.

I get that it won't appeal to everyone (and as I said before, I've had extremely varied feedback about my own approach to this climb), but to me it was something special. Thanks for your contribution to this aspect of Blueys climbing.

Regards,

- Paul T