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General Climbing Discussion

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A short story 23-Mar-2005 At 1:06:56 PM LittleMac

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Leading off on the last pitch, panic began to set in as I was forced to race the last of the sun's feeble rays up the cliff before the darkness set in. Throwing in a single Hex and one other nut I rigged a hasty belay and wedged myself amongst the boulders at the top of the pinnacle. On Belay, Climb When Ready. Nothing............On Belay, Climb When Ready Nothing........................ (this is a common problem on the last pitch of Arachnus) A number of swear were hurled into the growing wind when finally I felt some movement on the rope. The first of my companions climbed quickly (much to my relief) and was soon standing next to me. I commented that the wind was getting quite strong and that it was now pitch black. Time 7.50pm

Again yelling for the final climber to begin, I could get no response. As it turned out he hadn't noticed a knot in the rope which had become jammed in a crack above him so th e rope wouldn't pull tight. Finally after much pulling on the ropes I somehow managed to free the rope and pull it tight and he began climbing. The problem now was that the knot kept hitting pieces of gear and would stop causing the rope to go slack and so the climber would stop. eventually we worked out waht the problem was and we manged to all arrive at the top of the cliff. Time 8.45pm

Ok lets go, let's just check the guidebook first. Where's the guidebook???? I thought you had it............ The guidebook was on the last belay ledge (someone returned it to us the next day) so I would have t do this from memory. Getting across the gap between the watchtower and the ledge proved somewhat difficult as it was now so dark I couldn't see how far the gap actually was. In the end I just took a chance and leant out over the gap having faith that the ledge had to be there. Success, we were now on the main walk off ledge of the watchtower.

Now as most people are aware there is a rap descent on the watchtower which in the daylight is quite simple to find, we couldn't find the anchors (mainly because we were to afraid to walk close to the edge). It was also so dark that we couldn't see more than two steps in front of us and never having been up here before I had no idea what the ledge was like. To solve this problem we gathered up handfuls of small rocks and threw them towards where the edge was (irresponsible I know but we were desperate). Judging by the sound we were able to jusdge how close the edge was. Eventually we reached the descent gully. Time 11.00pm

Now we had to make a descision, because we had planned to rap we hadn't bothered to check out how to descend the gully. The only thing we knew was that the pole leading down the gully eventually led up to the tower, so up we went until we reached flat ground and headed off through the bushes searching for a track (unaware that the tower was a mere 50 metres away) eventually we found the tower and the road and made our way to the summit car park. On our arrival we came across a guy in a beaten up old combie van looking for the Pines, we told him if he gave us a lift we would show him where they were and relieved we piled in.

We got back to camp to find our other friends sitting around a camp fire, eating and drinking etc apparently unconcerned as to our whereabouts. On questioning they replied, Oh we were coming to have a squiz shortly. Top mates those. Time 12.10am