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Rescue on Arapiles - Melbourne Cup Weekend 10-Nov-2009 At 1:36:44 PM Richard

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On 9/11/2009 benwolf wrote:
>Interested in everyone's thoughts...

“Two hours.” he replied confidently.

Here's my thoughts - a better rule is an hour per pitch. Sounds like a long time, but by the time you lead, set up belay, seconder pulls down belay, climbs and removes gear, sorts gear, it all adds up. Not shareing alernate leads aslo slows things down. And after that you still have to get off - add another hour for the down climb (probably slowed by sore feet) through Ali's, or abseil (still takes time - only 1 person at once). So its a slow process. You will never never never do a 5 pitch climb, bottom to top, let alone to return to the start, in 2 hours.

We did death watch beetle, 3 pitches, left camp about 9ish (i think) got back about 2.00 pm. And I did not lead slow, most of my lead pitches were fairly easy, and my partner climbs about 4 or 5 grades harder than that climb. The down clinb was slow, due to painfull toes, and you want to take care on that as its the most dangerous part of the day. We had a camel back with about 1.5 liters - all used.