Well the boys are down..Lee managed to climb every pitch up to the nipple pitch...Ben was a little shut down on the Open book pitch with sore fingers and fatigue so moved on to belay duties so lee could try and climb the last crux pitch and then they could blast for the top....We watched Lee from the bridge flying around on the slick...OK NO foot holds with his finger tips in the roof of the nipple picth...he would do the craziest moves I have ever seen...then his feet would slide out and he would slide down and flop on the rope....the scariest thing I have seen was Lee pull a piton. He was climbing past the second bit of gear in the roof...ben was belaying on the porta ledge then suddenly Lee was falling soooo far down the cliff that I actually screamed.. from the bridge it looked like he grabbed onto the bottom haulbag to stop his fall...turns out ben caught him but the porta ledge tipped sideways and Lee took a screamer (with me doing all the screaming)...it took about 5 minutes for me to stop shaking and from what Ben said for him too..He was calling "lee...leee.."and thinking Oh my god I've killed my brother...he had caught the full brunt of the piton on his hand and has a mighty lump and gash from it and he has the most perfect carabiner bruise you have ever seen on his thigh from the quick draw smacking into him...Lee climbed up the haul bags...did a quick video interview, recovered a bit then went up to try the picth a few more times....alll was OK.

 

So basically Lee and Ben think it will go next shot. Tom on the bridge was telling me the Hubers worked it for ages so its a huge effort from the guys and people here are shocked when they find out they haven't rapped in to work the crux pitches...go figure! we are going to have a couple of weeks climbing other stuff and then Lee and Ben will go for it again! It sounds like crazy hard technical climbing...Lee said that the grading is stout compared with the other El Cap routes he has done...the Flying Butress pitch had 3 bolts in 30 metres and no other gear potential!!!

 

Rest day today and painfully moving camp sites again tomorrow so Lee and I are waling around to the base of the West Face so I can check out the route and try it on Thursday (Weather permitting!!)