161 Old Men South route
Julian Todd
While team elite waited for our German guests to arrive, team Wook went on ahead, and team novice followed on slowly and were caught up at the tyrolean, which turned out to be just as crap in the other direction when you get your descender caught up in the loop as the pulley tries to take you 45deg horizontally out into the sag of the rope. The stepping off part is at least a meter from the end, which saves the last fine minutes of arm hauling that you have to do on the way out (a disto measure showed its within 1deg of being level). Jess got strung up for a long while and opted for the down and up pitches, Alex went there too. The double rebelay on a boulder on the up pitch was quite slow too, so when we arrived at the junction it was nearly time for the novices to head out. After one of the Germans found the way on in the South route I set Jess and Alex finally to survey it, then went off to see what was going on elsewhere. Team Wook's lead was crapping out. They'd found some blind soily lower chamber that was a good place to take an afternoon dump that simply wasn't going to hold out for much longer. For a brief few minutes the South passage looked like the best going lead. Unfortunately I said so and this was held against me even though it had crapped out but the time I got back to it. The Germans had gone down the pitch and found the way. Team elite, who were allowed to stay at the pushing front after 6pm, dropped what they were doing and followed on until very late, even though they were going to come back the next day, while team novice trapsed all the way out and across the plateau in the dark, but who cares about them if they can't keep up.