Listening to the sixth sense

In the world of alpinism there is so much going on behind the scenes. Having been shut down for eight days with constant bad weather, we finally have good weather with us and although we are desperate to get climbing it is time for careful contemplation. There are a lot of unstable snow slopes with significant avalanche hazard, huge cornices, and on most of the faces it's very difficult to read the conditions.

After our recce mission yesterday down towards the Lower Ruth Gorge, Matt and I still had some doubts about possible lines to try. Hence today we took another day to check out an idea of a new route on Mt Bradley that we had noticed two years ago. The line is climbable for sure, but conditions are less than ideal. We took a look at the initial snow cone, which is heavily loaded at present and a bit spooky.

Shortly after arriving back at our basecamp in the afternoon the sun hit the summit slopes of the West ridge and a sizable avalanche ripped down the 1000m line..one less option to think about then.

After a quick chat we have now decided to focus our energies on a line on the 1000m West face of the London Tower. Its going to be a fun adventure with some cool looking mixed climbing, followed by a bit of big walling, and then more mixed above. With the funky conditions it feels right in our heads to go for this line and its always so important to listen to your sixth sense.

We also have some new friends in camp after a day of being the only people in the Ruth Gorge, a mate from New Hampshire, Freddy Wilkinson has flown in with Renan Osturk and they are hoping to have a shot at the 'Tooth' skyline traverse. They came down to our camp with a rucksack full of beers and we had a good catch up.

Spirits are high and it's good to finally have a cool objective to focus our energy on. We will probably take all our kit down the glacier tomorrow and hope to get a really early start on Thursday.

Bye for now,
Jon