Only my first week in"job" so I'm delighted to have some news sent in, and a new route as well! Route “Searching for Sumo” 20/08/2011, Craig Jefferies and Daniel Joll.
M5+ maybe M6 ?? 6 Pitches
Located on a buttress just left of the west face and about 200m left of the North summit on Double Cone, tops out onto the ridge.
The line follows a very close to the arête of the buttress on the left hand side (of the arête) in several spots you could have escaped onto easier pitches or snow slopes to the left however at each of the crux pitches we choose the harder looking of the two corners that always seemed to be available. 6 pitches not sure if its M6 definitely pretty solid M5 two of the cruxes are quite bouldery so its hard to grade them. The final pitch is a definite three star 55m corner with some nice ice runnels and steep hooking to get you established into the corner. There are three similar grade crux pitches one pitch of M4 and a couple of easier ones P1 50degrees (head up a right leaning snow ramp P2 M4 (wide corner on left half way up snow ramp) P3 M5+(boulder over small roof to steep pic & finger crack easier option could be wide crack to the left) P4 M3 P5 M5 (take the left corner capped by nice roof traverse left and up at the roof) P6 M5+ (drop 15m down a snow gully to the base of this ausome corner, there is a shorter easier looking corner available on the right) . The route protects very well and all the crux sections have good gear.
A couple of knife blade pitons are handy, single set of wires and we had a double set of cams. However you probably only need doubles of zero to 2 with one number 3 & 4
The pic showing the top 35m of the last pitch, the crux of this pitch is not shown in the pic and is probably the bottom 10-12m of the pitch with some committing moves required to get you established in the corner.
Also can report conditions on Fridays fool are thin but good soloed wed 17. Upper section is in great shape. Neil also says that minge cunt had some nice ice on it soloed Friday 19, no doubt the big snow dump will have changed that though.
Thanks again Dan, always great to have new routes being put up. Apologies I had some issues getting the pictures up but I'll get them up as soon as possible as they're great.