Rostrum 2- the redemption

well, that was interesting. we prviously reached the ledge at the end of the third pitch after 5 hours. yesterday, lighter and determinrd to climb fast and not to procrastinate, we got there in half the time.
after a quick break we headed up for the other five pitches, starting with the 11c crux. how Alex Honold can solo that is crazy. the feet are very slick and the climbing is steep with powerful locks. lets just say that after three pitches of hard climbing I sat on some gear more than once. I think that it is about a frog 24 which I wouldn't normally on sight. Pretty short and quite workable though if fresh. That oitch finishes with a classic yosemite "5.9" section which ended my 4 pitch block.
Alex took over the lead and bravely lead the ugliest pitch on the climb. A six inch offwidth in which John - my big cam - was his saviour. you basically use every technique possible to avoid getting right in the crack but eventually you have no choice.
The two guys behind us were great to climb with. Tom from petzel was getting each pitch clean, including the 11c. They only started from the third pitch so were fresh and enthusiastic. Luckily for Tom, they didnt pass us, but I think he wanted to see how we did on the two offwidths. on the first one, his only big cam wouldnt fit and he would have had to run it out badly. I lowered him down John and he managed to thrutch his way through cleanly, if any offwidth climbing can be called clean.
the last pitch was another offwidth which starts traversing under a roof and from there the belayer cant see the rest of the pitch. getting up into the crack was hard and Alex did awesomely while I chatted to tom about gear and stuff. from the top of the climb I lowered down John and the new massive cam. otherwise Tom would have basically been soloing.
Tom was very appreciative of John and the other cam that there was a grigri 2 attached to John when he handed him back. Thanks Tom.
The whole day was great and I have never done so many hand jams in a day or even a week. I almost wished that I had taped up, but not quite. 4 amazing hand sections. thin hands corner, perfect to wide hands for 20m, a hard thin hands corner and finally an amazing perfect hands overhung section finishing with very hard 11b moves to finger locks.
We are seriously considering doing the last 5 pitches again to see if we can get them clean as well.

Tom from Petzl on the 10c thin hands

Tom and Greg still on pitch 5

Alex on Pitch 7, overhanging hand crack with some stems. The top of the Rostrum looming above.

Looking down from pitch 6 past my designer rope bag

Sitting in the cave before pitch 8 offwidth. Cosy if you don't think about what is to come.

 Bye Bye Alex and good luck getting into the off width via the overhanging shitstorm of a forearm jamming layback stem moves.

 Us on the top of the Rostrum with plenty of daylight and the taste of victory quenching our otherwise very dry mouths.