136 - Push near Runny Bottom
Becka Lawson
An hour down to the end of Oatso, pretty damn familiar territory by now. Down Steady Aim and the CM arrow climb under boulders to the aven climb I'd told Andy + Simon to look at + which they'd free-climbed partway up yesterday. En route, we looked at the big wet canyon on the bottom right of Lost in Space, but decided it didn't look too promising. Likewise the pitch at the base of the CM arrow climb below Steady Aim pitch. Likewise the squitty rift at the base of Steady Aim pitch (opposite side of the boulder chamber). Anyway, back to our aven, easy freeclimb up ~20m, right goes to mud-filled tube, on left rift goes off up steeply. Jon climbed up to under the crux, which was smoother and more vertical than the lower section, which had lots of footholds + thutch potential. Jon put a protection bolt in, then Neil belayed him (on lovely muddy SRT rope), put a sling around a higher natural then had a few minutes of heavy breathing as he strained up to the easier section ("I'm nervous" said Neil!) Jon put a bolt in at the top, below 2 roof tubes, I came up + put another bolt in, then Jon went up again towards the more vertical roof tube, which had a great draft (and _impressive_ white hand-sized helictites) but had conclusive carbide + electric failure + we decided we'd really not got the kit for this so we surveyed 3 legs out + went home (derigging Steady Aim & Andy's pitches).