Followed by lovely parallel crack climb, which is pitch 4 in book. This lead up to Basin on Orion Face and a couple of pitches later we were at Second Slab - a tough pitch up very steep exposed ground - over to Mark for another great lead and on to what the book referred to as easier ground...a couple of pitches later and we wondered exactly where we were; nothing seemed obvious as a route and the 'notch' referred to in book was not obvious. We then headed right looking for a referred to slab - thinking we found it, we moved up right but ended on hard ground.
So, undeterred, we headed further right over a horrible snowy pitch - aaaargh - and just kept on a rising traverse of sorts, always looking for an escape to the North Buttress. Darkness fast approaching, we sought out Zero Gully direction and after a couple of very dubious moves on obvious winter (fractured rock) ground, Mark took the honour of topping out of Slav Route/Zero Gully area, with me arriving at 917pm precisely. I think we had 12 pitches in total on 50m twin ropes, so a long route indeed.
Red line is ours; yellow line is probably where we should have gone...it wasn't that obvious tho :(
After a quick hug at the top (because we survived - no other reason) and a sarnie and pic, we headed down the Tourist Route asap - first time I've done it and it's horrible!!
Youth hostel for a coke, a mint Magnum ice cream and taxi back to the North Face carpark for about 1am and we we completely knacked. Chippy at only food outlet open for a thousand miles to reaalced lost calories and a mad dash down the road to be home at 3am.
Wow, what a day - great fun but rather a harder, longer day than the lunch stop on the summit we had planned. One litre of water between the two of us all day didn't help!
Awesome fun though :)
