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General Climbing Discussion

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Vic/NSW big wall 20-Jun-2014 At 8:55:25 PM Ithomas

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'Tending to disagree' is to have no opinion at all as someone famous once said. It is important not to asume that climbers are smart or competent and to asume that on big lonely cliffs, shit can happen.

I have had to rescue a party on Bastion Bluff because they strayed off route to the easy angled left. The blunt arete doesn't offer a terribly clear line when your nose is up against the rock and actually offers a number of possibilities some of which may lead rightwards into hard Stonewall Jackson territory and some of which lead into the technically easy ground to the left.
If you go right it will become obvious pretty quickly that you are in trouble and have to do something about it before you die.
If you mistakenly go left it is possible to get drawn ever deeper into a morass of loose, broken, poorly protected crap a long way off the ground.
A smart climber would probably not do Bastion Buttress at all (but see sentence 2). It may be easy but can be dangerous. And if its a little damp - well.
The point of John's post and my comment was not to argue about grades, but rather, to examine Wendy's comments and emphasise the seriousness of our premier big wall climbing area.