Wednesday 29^th

It's a week later and we're back at the Chin, today the weather is beautiful. This time we've got Leila's beautiful new camera, an Olympus point and shoot. The lighting sucked somewhat, but that didn't stop me trying to pop off a few at the in-shadow cliff face anyway. I also snapped a couple of Leon on the scree-field too. We had given up on the topo map we were trying to use previously, it was for top-ropers who rappelled down from the top to ledges at about half-way. It only described a narrow range of the cliff face anyway.

So we just looked at the cliff from the trail and tried to spy possible lines of ascent. We spotted one that was to the left of the routes described by the topo map and right of "Gumby's Delight". One day I'll have a good photo of the cliff and be able to point out exactly where all these bloody climbs are. Anyway, we saw this line and scrambled up the scree to the cliff base. Once again, at the base and amongst the trees we quickly lost where the line might have been and just sort of stumbled about looking for a start that would probably be nearby our planned route.

It was 4.15 pm as Leon won the toss and got first lead again. Again! I'm beginning to hate having to belay on the first pitch. It's dirty, slippery, mosquitos whine about your ears and the bushes scratch against you … oh boo hoo I wanna go home. Anyway Leon collected what gear he needed from me and went first, picking a very tricky flaring off-width and which he only got over by dint of standing on his tippy toes and reaching high up to a small positive hold with both hands. Of course I whinged at him to place protection early and often, forcing the poor bugger to hang while trying to find a place for his new Trango #10 (he had at first wanted to leave it with me but I talked him into taking it by saying "look that wide crack just up there will take it, no problem") … of course the crack turned out to be useless, flaring like an open book with no opportunity for the Trango to bite. So Leon sent it sliding back down the line to me, bloody thing nearly smacked me in the privates as I caught it. Ouch, that could have been a show-stopper for sure. Later in the pitch he said that he saw a perfect spot for it. Doh!

Pretty soon he was up over the off-width and, while standing on a nice ledge, struggled a bit to find protection. He got something good in and checked out the line immediately above. Not good. Very tricky, overhanging, lichen everywhere, looked like trouble for two. So he did the traverse thing to the right, looking for another way up. Notice a pattern here? We seem to do a traverse at least once in every climb, comes from on-sighting unfamiliar terrain I suppose.

Leon somehow got between one of those evil little cliff-trees, the ones that like to grab at your gear as you try to slip by, and into a narrow little chimney. He was out of sight at this stage and periodically yelled for slack and then tension, sure signals that he was placing protection on a difficult ascent. It wasn't long before he indicated that a belay anchor was in order and I settled down for a bit of a wait. During which time I amused myself by weeding and slapping at mosquitoes. Leon eventually told me he was off belay and started hauling up the excess rope, at the other end of which I was securely tied. While he took up the slack I further amused myself by removing my climbing shoes and emptying the dirt and bugs out that had collected while I was belaying his climb.

I just managed to rescue my #1 Camalot, the first piece Leon placed, from deep inside a crack the little bugger (the piece, not Leon) had worked it's way into. You hear about this sort of thing happening all the time but it's still a wake-up call when it happens to you, that piece isn't cheap (well, it was a birthday present, but they're still not cheap).

Anyway, after cleaning that one out I followed Leon's line up the off-width. Instead of hand-jamming, which Leon is so good at, I stemmed wide and concentrated on using my feet on a series of nicely placed (if widely spaced) footholds. I got over that, worked my way between that bloody little tree and up into the small chimney. Wow, this was short but a serious bit of leading by Leon. He had placed two pieces in it on the way too, nice job. Leon was just above on a small ledge built for one. We were actually quite close to where we wanted to be.

We exchanged gear and I looked at the line directly above. There was a crack just to the right of an arete. It looked pretty vertical, there was also an overhang near the top of it, hmmm. Oh well, no guts no glory as they say. I gave Leon the camera and the nut tool and took virtually everything else off him. After reorganizing all of the nuts and working with Leon to sort out the rope I started up.

This lead was my hardest one yet. The footholds tended to be tiny ledges less than the width of a fingernail, the good positive holds were pretty spaced, I occasionally found myself swinging around the arete looking for holds on the other side of it. The protection was sparce, and that meant running it out for quite a while between placements. We figured that this pitch was sustained 5.8 climbing, with the occasional 5.9 move thrown in for good measure.

It didn't take long for my right leg, which got better footholds than the left, to tire out and I did the sewing machine step with it from time to time. I got lost at one point, going out a bit to the right of the crack onto a ledge that lead nowhere, finding myself staring at a featureless expanse of near vertical face above me. Having to back climb from that was scary, I was already several metres above my last protection and it had taken me two smear steps in a row to get where I was. Reversing those moves really got my attention. After getting back on the crack I was stuck for a while. I could feel a severe sloper hold at arms-reach above me, but there was no way I was going to trust that right now, I hate hand jamming like the plague. I always think the bones in my hand are going to deform and pop the hand out just as I swing over. No choice here though. So in goes the right hand above me just over my head, I squeeze it into a fist and feel it "cam" on both sides of the crack. I lift my legs up and place my feet against the crack ready for the push. I let go of the undercling grip I had with my left and feel my full weight take on the right. So far so good. Push with the legs and reach up high with the left. Smack, straight into a nice positive hold the left hand goes. Unclench the right fist and match the right hand with the left. Pulled up a little more and I could get my feet into position. Phew.

I was way above my last protection, maybe a little over four metres, that would mean a nine to ten metre drop if I fell from here. So into the crack went a big piece, my #12 wired nut, and I clipped the rope in as quickly as I could. I was breathing pretty hard and still furiously blocking out all sorts of stuff like how hard it all is and how high up I am and what is it that I'm actually doing up here anyhow. Still had to get past the overhang. It turned out to be small enough for me to just go around rather than over it, that was also a difficult move high above my protection, but I was pretty pumped by then and felt good and controlled. Leon said he could here me grunting away like a hog in heat and figured the going was tough.

I topped out (sort of, I was actually in a deep cleft at the top, still about 2 metres below the actual finish … but there was a crowd of tourists up there trying to see what we were doing, they were making a bit of noise and I wanted to stay focused while setting up and belaying Leon's climb) and got things ready for Leon. I have to get him to take me through the knots again, because it took an age for me to put a simple clove-hitch on my line. I also have to buy some more carabiners, because I had to put gear at my feet to free enough of them for me to complete the setup. After taking up the slack I called down to Leon that he was on belay and that he could start.

He seemed to think it was a decent lead. After he got by me and up amongst the madding crowd I cleaned up the belay station and joined him. The crowd left pretty quick while we sorted our gear and started on the immediate post-mortem discussions. The weather was nice, it was 6.45 pm.

A day or so later both Leon and I started to suffer horrible itchy welts all over our skin. It turned out that we had climbed through a patch of poison sumac. As Leon was below me when I moved through it, he was showered in bits and pieces of the plant, and then he moved through it as well. We had no idea, until the next day, what would be the consequence of this. Leon, having gone second, suffered the worst. His condition lasted for well over a week. I was pretty uncomfortable only for three or four days.