Sorry Neil, but you said it yourself "after the corner". The corner ended at the choss cave above where I first traversed left. There's also the fact that we'd already passed 1 choss cave (up the corner - you'll remember that as the ridiculous backstep move) when we went left at the 2nd choss cave, and SHOULD have gone left at the 3rd choss cave, with each choss cave getting progressively smaller.
Macciza - You of all people should know that "hard, easy, soft and sandbagged" are all VERY relative terms when dealing with obscure trad multipitch, especially from the sort of individuals who don't treat the idea of a grading system with any degree of seriousness (Burgermeister Pitch 1, first 8m, graded 20, anyone? Hotel California Pitch 1, originally graded 21, anyone?).
Furthermore, Mikl has verified that several very experienced climbers have also ended up off route and in some "exciting" positions on this route in the past.
Finally, is the fact that when weaving your way up a sea of monster choss, the route -by its very nature- is obscure, in order to avoid the worst of the choss. Had I been picking my own route WITHOUT any beta I would have gone up the corner further, but by reading too much into the route description we ended up in the wrong place. And reading into the route description was necessary because -considering the sea of choss- it wasn't improbably that the obscure line forged WAS the only non-chossy path up the wall (other pitches followed the same premise, hence "turtle beach"), and continuing up the "obvious" line might well have led to an insurmountable choss dead-end.
|