New Routing in Hong Kong

Last weekend was the second weekend in a row that I’ve been helping my regular climbing partner, Nick Smith, develop a crag here in Hong Kong. Nick has already put in some serious effort to cut a path to the base of this crag and spent lunchtimes brushing lichen, cutting vines and digging out cracks but I feel that as a duo we managed to achieve quite a bit of work over the past weekends.



The bottom of the crag sits in a little grotto, guarded from downhill by a wall of rock. Originally the best way to access the foot of this crag was a relatively easy (maybe V0-ish, 6m-ish) corner boulder problem. Generally this would be a good warm up but after lugging 15kg of gear through the jungle, fighting with the undergrowth most of the time, having to climb, downclimb, climb, downclimb with gear gets to be a little wearing. By the end of the day, however, we had cut ourselves a nice path that, while not a footpath, was perfectly adequate and a lot better than the boulder problem entrance.

Also during the day we managed to make first ascents of three of the four traditional lines at the crag. The first was a layback, crack line with a hard start, a tree growing out of the crack at half height and a nice finish. Next I climbed the trench with not great pro lower down and quite a wide fist crack at the top. We both managed to place my #4 Camalot, confirming that it was a worthy purchase. Lastly I climbed the corner crack which offers quite good trad pro down the bottom and when the crack runs out, Nick's placed a bolt to protect the delicate finish. This is probably my favourite climb so far at the crag, although easy, is pretty interesting and engaging till the top. By the way, none of these climbs have been named yet so any help would be most welcome. We’re going for a theme of Hell/Hades/Satan/The Devil etc. Some that we’ve come up with so far are (all the god ones are Nicks): Looseifer, Crossing The River Styx, The Devil wears Prana, The Divine Comedy, Brimstone… Any suggestions left in the comments will be seriously considered and any that we use will win a prize*! (*prize may or may not be a handshake or kick in the shins)

Later,
Joe


The harder crack with tree at half height.