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Buffalo Aidfest November 2013 4-Dec-2013 At 10:10:27 AM sbm

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(Here's the trip report!)

Hi guys,

Got back to Sydney this arvo after spending the rest of the week climbing on the plateau. Great trip and very intense at times, guess that's what you go to Buffalo for! A trip report here, I will write something better edited in a bit, and James (Bulti) has video footage to sort through.

So we did Defender Of The Faith over two days last monday/tuesday. We rapped with all our gear to Fuhrer Ledge and didn't leave any fixed ropes at the top because that's boring. Plus to keep it more exiting, we opted not to do things like scout escape routes or read the route description (one party member was surprised that there were hanging belays, the other thought you could walk off of Fuhrer Ledge as mentioned before). We also forgot the zip line and the fuel canister for the jetboil, just to be sure.

The abseils took quite a while and put us behind schedule (James in particular had a hard time with the pig). Plus we didn't have the brightest start.

Touching down on Fuhrer Ledge

Anyway I think I was grovelling up the slimey wet chimney to start at like 11am. At the top of the slimey wet chimney I remember placing a #4 in a puddle before back cleaning it, like it was actually submerged under water.

I made my way up the rest of the ramp and corner, stopping to glance around the arete every now and then to see if the bolt was getting any closer, finally placed a couple of good RPs and was able to lean around and clip the shiny hanger. Awesome!

Peering around the arete

However after the bolt I got a bit stuck. Finally I placed a wonky cam in the flaring flake above. Progress! But it popped and I fell. I eagerly batmanned back to the bolt, and this produced so much slack for the belayer that Ro apparently nearly fell off of Fuhrer Ledge!

I didn't notice this as I had spotted a #1 RP placement between two crystals out to the left that I was sure would hold. It didn't and I took a fairly nasty swinging fall and took a gouge out of the back of my hand (wasn't wearing gloves for some reason). There was a slight scream of frustration at this point, things went a bit red and I tensioned left and did two hook moves to finally gain the crack. Hooray!

Unfortunately I reached the first (hanging) belay and it was appalling. Literally the worst fixed gear I have ever seen outside of the sea cliffs, this appalling drooping 5mm carrot and a rusty piton which apparently has a crack in the eye. For the main anchor (I remember this well because I was VERY glad when we moved off it) I placed an ok nut and an ok #0.5 camalot to back up the rust. For the hauling anchor I placed a good nut and a yellow C3 and backed it up to the piton. We also placed another #0.5 sized metolius cam as another backup. It was all ok but lacked that comforting cliff towing piece....

The belay

Ro's view as he approached the first belay

Everyone and everything came up and we argued about the belay and clusterf'd about and eventually James started on the next pitch. He reached the roof and placed an RP and then hand placed the Tomahawk (our special secret aid weapon) and was able to get around the roof.

However at this point he was out of steam and lowered off. We sent up our "Ro"pe gun to french free the rest of the pitch, however he ended up improvising some sort of aiding system to finally crawl to the bomber, shiny bolts of the second belay.

At this point the sun was setting, I had been standing in slings for hours and was getting cold and mentally drained...I persuaded James that cleaning, jugging and hauling the second pitch was not going to happen today. James set up the portaledge while Ro fixed and rapped the second pitch. He thoughtfully backed up our anchor to the fixed line...however I didn't find this out until afterwards.

I tell you what, there's trusting your gear placements...and then there's hanging three guys, a portaledge and a haulbag off of a trad anchor you built while everyone bounces around eating and getting into sleeping bags.

Around this time someone was yelling and flashing a light at us from the lookout on the south side? It sounded like Macca? We debated whether yelling and flashing back would be asking for rescue (which we were...pretty sure...we didn't want) and eventually did just a little bit of flashing and yelling.

Three guys on a two person portaledge is not comfortable but it was alright (the hammock for the third was a dumb idea and didn't happen). I slept but I was cold.

End of day one