I’ve been home in Newry for 2 weeks busy helping my parents move house. I got out a few evenings to hen Mountain. My local. Its 20 mins drive from my parents house and features perfect granite, and a lot of wind. Yesterday I did a new route. Repentance, E6 6b? It is the really obvious line between last rights and purgatory. I stuck with the catholic/religeousy theme for the hard routes on that wall, Last rights e5, unforgiven e4, purgatory, e5… I practiced the route on a top rope, but on reflection I think its very flashable, a bit of beta could be useful though. It took me 3 sessions to work out what to do. I was making it way harder than it needed to be. I think I thought that because it had never been done it would be savagely hard and went straight into trying it on a shunt. Its not, and it is a great mystery to me why it hadn’t been done before, being one of the most accessible tors in the mournes. I don’t know why I had never tried it before, because it is so close to home.
It is super safe, with a bomber number four nut at your waist when you do the crux. However getting the nut in is very difficult. The climbing is mostly stemming strenuously between the two grooves, with a few thumb sprags and a bit of crystal pulling at the crux. Its a great bit of climbing at one of my favorite crags.
johnmccuneclimb 