Present: Jenny, Chris, Katherine, Julia, Duncan, Martin, Anthony
Fucking camera gear.
Chris
Because there were lots of us (and some people were being hungover) we split into two groups, the rigging team (Jenny, Chris, Katherine and Julia) set off first. I started rigging the entrance pitch as two walkers arrived, ‘cool’ I thought, they’ll think I look dead hard when I climb along the rift to the Y hang. I was wrong – they were dead hard themselves having once bottomed Juniper on ladders!
I got to the first rebelay and found the rope a bit short (despite being longer than in the rigging guide) anyway, I made it reach by tightening the rebelay and undoing the knot at the end.
I started traversing along to the p-hangers and eventually the second pitch – this traverse wasn’t too bad, lots of footholds in nice places. Abbed down the pitch and started along the obvious traverse with a very uncooperative tacklesac, got a bit scared when the ledges ran out and the p-hangers didn’t appear so I went back along with a very very uncooperative tacklesac to get directions from Julia. Apparently I was going the right way, so back I go with the seriously annoying tacklesac – this time I carried on to the p-hangers and stopped being scared a bit. Rigged along the traverse, past the ‘bad step’ which wasn’t too bad, but would have been nicer with Al-length legs. Got to the y-hang and abbed down, thinking, ‘the tacklesac feels heavy, must have lots of rope left’ looked down and noticed that it had ~ 10 mailons and no rope and even with rope stretch I was only just about level with the next p-hanger…. A couple of slings joining the knot to the p-hanger and I reached the ledge – waited for Chris to get the next bag of rope. Katherine decided to turn back here having done really well for her 2nd ever SRT trip. Duncan very kindly went out with her. Anthony then arrived and it appeared that Julia and Martin had also turned back. The three of us carried on down the final pitch and nearly got to the bottom.
Then we did the same in reverse (with Chris and then Teacher derigging), this time I carried the nasty, heavy, annoying 64m rope, which got stuck at every opportunity possible. But was probably far better than camera gear AND a tacklesac!
Dead good trip – it was nice to go somewhere new, and the last pitch was cool.
Jenny