Grade
III,4,12
Length
250m
0
Quality
First ascent
Bill McLeod, January 1995
Located on
Topo ref
MP
Climb the right-hand buttress below the east shoulder of Mt Cran. The first pitch is steepish when climbed direct but can be bypassed on the right-hand side on much easier ground. Once above, the first ascent went up the centre of the buttress on mostly sound, juggy rock. Variations exist that may push the grade up.
- P1
- 12
- Alpine (Commitment) III
- Alpine (Technical) 4
- 250m
Comments
UUID
87c9140d-0b20-4ffc-bf58-9be05bae8d85
I can highly recommend the route. Grade 16 max, but nothing sustained above grade 15. Decent gear and not that much choss (for graywake - pretty similar for Craig route for rock quality. Much much better rock than Deep Purple!). 9 pitches (the second to last pitch of choss could be walked - we already had the rope out so I walked the rope up, but you could put it away, but you probably want it for the last pitch, as at least the way I did it there were some grade 15-16 ish moves).
We did end up climbing the horn (pitch 7) which was great! A really stellar pitch.
Turns out the sun doesn't hit that face at all this time of year, so getting down we rapped a lot of the snow as it was really hard and quite steep and we only had one axe and light crampons on approach shoes. It was a slow descent, but I can't complain about rappelling under Aurora!!!!
Climbing from the foot of the buttress is definitely steep direct. We went right, finding much easier ground (walking really) once above, we decided to climb the arete on the left hand side. This was harder climbing than grade 12 perhaps 14/15 but I am a relative novice and didn't find it too hard on lead. Rock was pretty good. However it started to get a little over hung so cut back inside where there was a short slabby section, before returning out to the arete on the left. We were taking too long so made our way out to the easier ground up the middle about 3/4 way up avoiding what looked like a really fun horn to climb. The rock was deteriorating the higher we got mind. All in all a really fun trip and a finish on the horn would probably be awesome!