Monks Cowl

Anyone got info on when Monks was first climbed? And anyone actually done the climb, Barry's or Standard route?

I've done the standard route three times and Barry's once. Barry's is much more tricky - it has a difficult traverse and if you come off, you end up hanging off the rope, so best to take prusik loops on that route.

the Standard route is effectively 3 pitches. The first off the deck (just across from the Cave) is straightforward. The second pitch is a traverse from right to left (towards the escarpment) on a slab in the shape of a long wave. There are placements at the top, but you rely on friction for feet. All three times I climbed it there was a wire permanently stuck in the top about 1/3 of the way along that we clipped. The third pitch is short and straight up from the end of the traverse. From there you weave through the rock bands to the top with short, easy scrambles and no exposure through the rock bands. We never roped up for this as the gradient isn't very steep. I think the standard route is graded F1 or F2 but I've climbed much harder F1s before.

The last of the 3 times we climbed, we took a group of 9 people, 6 of whom had never climbed before, ever! I'm still not sure why we decided to do this. Anyway, I put up some fixed rope across the traverse and each novice climber had two slings to clip into the fixed rope as well as a belay rope held at both ends that we could pull through to clip the next climber on. It took most of the day to get everyone up and down, back to the cave. At the end of that trip 7 of us, including backpacks, went back to Escourt in my 1100 golf. Fun days those.

Final thought, avoid these routes when the rock is wet. Even the standard route would be hard then.

Thanks guys good info. Intrepid, next winter we need to do the lot, maybe even find some ice climbing there. Long weekend maybe?

Hi Guys,
I've not been up the icy gullies in winter in this area (just the usual way up to Cowl Cave from Keith Bush and also down the otherside towatds Injasuthi). Actually I've not done any specific ice climbing in the Berg at all. Was focussed more on the rock climbing and took the snowy events as permission to play.

intrepid wrote:

But in terms of rock climbing Cathkin South Gully in the winter - best avoided?

Sorry - don't know. Not done that one.

But I will tell a short story about Cathkin while I'm logged on.

I went to a talk by Stephen Venables in Oxford, UK some time ago. Stephen was the first British climber up Everest without oxygen (and by a new route). I sat back at the start of the talk, expecting to see slides of the walk in, base camp, fixed ropes and so on. No more than ten slides in I couldn't believe it when very familiar images of the Berg filled the enormous screen and Stephen was giving chapter and verse about this pretty serious route he'd done on Cathkin. The SE ridge I think. Turns out he'd been a guest in SA a couple of months prior to the talk.

Hi Intrepid, you mentioned meeting two climbers when you last went and checked out the route. Was one of them Alan Grant?