Rostrum 1st attempt

We tried the Rostrum which was one of our big projects over here. It is 8 pitches of very good climbing. Some people call it the best climb in the valley.

It starts off with a fairly easy pitch and then the 4th pitch is the crux at 5.11c.

Things didn go exactly as planned. We tried ot haul a bag up with us. There seem to be 2 ways to go and both are a catch 22. If you want to take lots of water and food with you, then you need to haul a bag. But then you spend longer so you need more water. We liked this option but it turned out to be a bit of a fizzer on the single day long climbs.
I took too long on the first pitch because the last section was a fairly easy grade squeeze chimney. I had way too much gear on and it was getting caught all over the place. At one point, I was so jammed into the thinner part that I couldn even turn my head. Can wait for the harding slot on Astroman which is even tighter. I had to rearrange all of my gear from my back to the front before I could move properly. I eventually go up it and set up the belay. We were loosing time fast.

Some fast guys were waiting so we just let them go through. They seemed disappointed to find out that we were hauling a bag on a route that they planned to do in 3 hours. Anyway, the guy flew up thte thing strait to the 2nd pitch and only placed 1 piece of gear on the first pitch (30m). Mental, but light, fast and impressive.

I did the second pitch the same way that he had, a bit more run out but faster and slightly easier. I was very impressed when I did the moves and got to place some gear. When I moved up a bit further, my back twinged a bit and it seems that I must have pulled a muscle pulling through the vertical lieback moves. I couldn't get it to come good so I banged in a piece of gear and lowered down and Alex took over the leading for a while.

Just above where I had gotten to, he managed to take 2 scary falls, as is his way. The first one, he kind of flipped upside down. Not too dangerous, just scary. He finally got the second pitch.

The 3rd pitch which we will join to the 2nd next time was one of the best thin hands corner cracks you can imagine. I got some head cam footage of it.

The 4th pitch which finishes at an escape ledge was even better, with a hard start followed by a slightly wide hand crack that went for about 15 meters, even a bit overhung at one point. I also got some footage of this pitch.

From the ledge we checked the time, with the crux pitch just above. It is a 5.11c finger crack followed by an 11b Lieback. it was 2:30 already so we assessed where we were too slow and decided to come back and do it properly. Lighter, Smarter and faster.

The ledge where we bailed out at 2:30 was level with where the trees on the right come furthest to the left. Almost half way.

The climb is 800 feet or about 250m. It finishes up to the right of the roof at the top near the pointy bit.
If you look closely (click on the image and zoom in) in the bottom third of the cliff, you can see 2 guys on the route. We took this photo the day before we tried it.