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philbox
Moderator
Sep 16, 2002, 9:58 PM
Post #1 of 2
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Registered: Jun 27, 2002
Posts: 13105
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Escension has now gone free, During two days of hard climbing Cam Fairbairn and me Phil Box sent Escension free. Escension is the second of two routes now established on Mt. Warnings Wollumbin Shield. Escension 250 metres grade 25. Cam lead all the hard pitches and I lead some of the easier pitches.
Escension started life as an A2+ grade 17 mixed aid and free route about 18 months ago. Freeing this climb is the result of seven trips in to the base of the wall through thick subtropical rainforest festooned with evil fish hook barbed waitawhile vine. I estimate that I have spent the better part of about 48 hours walking through that forest.
We got to the top with heaps of daylight left on the second day. Cam had to work the fourth pitch into submission and he did four laps on it before he sent it free. We did add one bolt below where Nick drilled a bathook. We had some rope pulling hassles and we got back to camp at about nine oclock at night. We started the mission with our walk in leaving the truck at about 6.30 on Saturday morning. About 3.5 hours later saw us at our campsite. That day we fixed lines after freeing the first three pitches and french freeing the fourth ready for us to work the fourth pitch the next day. After jugging up on the Sunday we resumed Cams work on the fourth pitch and after four rounds at this monster it eventually went free. I sent the fifth pitch easily and after Cam jumped on as a second we trundled some huge death blocks, easily the biggest blocks yet to have been sent down to the aproach slabs. One of these blocks sliced our aproach slab hand over hand rope. It literally burnt throught the rope and we now have a squashed ended sealed off rope.
Cam blasted the next two difficult pitches and then I jumped on the pointy end. The last pitch we did with a lot of daylight left and that made route finding and gear placement easy. At the top anchors we could easily have added another 70 to 80 metres on to the top slabs but time was against us and we decided to leave the climb at its present length. We`ve done with it. I decided there and then to take my good static rope out with me as I probably wouldn`t be going back in there but when I got to the camp and started thinking I thought better and I will probably go in there and set up another line.
First pitch grade 7 aproach slabs
second pitch grade 24 mantle, overhung crack
third pitch grade 16 slab
fourth pitch grade 25 slab, face, overhung crack
fifth pitch grade 20 slab, face, slab
sixth pitch grade 23 traverse, overhang, crack
seventh pitch grade 24 face, crack
eighth pitch grade 17 slab
ninth pitch grade 16 slab
Phil...
[ This Message was edited by: philbox on 2002-09-16 14:59 ]
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ergophobe
Sep 19, 2002, 8:20 PM
Post #2 of 2
(1585 views)
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Registered: Jul 1, 2002
Posts: 150
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Congratulations Phil.
If you run out of aid climbs to free, come to Yosemite - there's lots there to work on!
Tom
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