Inner Horn

From the RD for Inner Horn Standard Route:

This is the easiest way to the top of the Inner Horn now that the belay block has fallen off the west face route. There is no exposure and only the faint of heart will have need of a rope. It is reasonably easy to down-climb the route. However, ropes will facilitate a quick descent, straight down to the Inner Horn - Chessman nek, from a convenient block located at a point directly overlooking the nek.

How tough is the Inner Horn route? Is the assessment of ropes being not particularly necessary accurate, or is that a bad idea? My thought is the concept of lead free climbing it and belaying the team up.

I am reasonably certain that a detailed writeup of this route is somewhere on the site, but google is failing to help me find it. Does anyone have a link, or can someone put up some photos and beta?

The plan is to do it in just over 2 weeks time.

Thanks Chris, that is very helpful!

If today taught me anything - "easy" rock passes can be insanely hairy!

Fortunately Neil will be leading on the climb, so I should manage. He hasn't done the route either, so beta is very helpful.

Inner Horn South Face Direct Route

Photos by Tony Marshall

So after much debate about a start time, Tony and Lorinda finally agreed to join Neil, Mike and I for a climb up Inner Horn. Planned route - whichever chimney on the south face looks good. Mike was not keen for standard route - although I am not sure why.

So at about 5:45AM, we set off from Twins Cave, the wind had been howling all night, and ominous clouds were about - so we wanted to get moving.

We weren't very fast, but we did eventually get to the spot below the Inner Horn/Chessmen saddle. None of the RDs mention any difficulties with this, and AndrewP had assured me that I shouldn't stress about it - so we figured there would be a hidden gully or something.

We went about 30m above trail and dropped our packs, filling our bottles, getting our our climbing gear and a few other items such as rain coats. I also took my car keys just because our packs would be clearly visible from the trail around the Outer Horn, so our spot wasn't as secure as it had been the day before.

As we got closer to the cliffs below the Inner Horn/Chessmen saddle, an easier gully presented itself. It was still not the easiest scramble around - mostly because the easiest line was wet. Mike eventually took my daypack from me so that I could maneuver through the scramble.


Lorinda starts the scramble

Mike and I try to figure out the best line

True to form - Mike intentionally takes the harder line

At the nek - which is considerably higher than the nek between the horns - we found my GPS had broken off its strap somewhere between the packs and the nek. We would have to keep an eye out for it on the way down.


Taking a break at the nek

The view from the nek

Dropping down from the nek

The traverse below the nek

The nek is only about 50m below the summit of the peak, but you have to drop around 30m on the south side to reach the grass ledge. We walked below what we think is the standard route, before seeing an easy scramble through the lower cliff band. When I was halfway up the exposed and not-as-easy-as-it-looked scramble, Neil found that we could have simply walked around this on a grass bank if we went 20m further. Nonetheless, after needing a rope to do a move that I could easily fall on (on a small piece of bomber grass), we found ourselves below 2 parallel chimneys.


Going up the hard way when we could have simply walked around this on the other side


In my defense - this does look quite scary and wasn't so easy


Neil belayed us around the exposed corner to get to the start of the climb

The right chimney looked wet and difficult, with a large chockstone to navigate near the top, so we opted for the left chimney.

There was an exposed traverse move to get to the base, which we roped, before Lorinda, Tony and I attached to a cam and waited for Neil to belay Mike up - Mike had been eager to lead as much as he could, and he had done well - so Neil let him lead again.

The first sequence is E-grade, with very good hand holds and small but solid footholds (i.e. more my usual type of climbing). Mike fell while placing the first piece of gear (a medium sized nut), a debate on whether one can onsight a route if they take a ground fall (of 1.2m) and thus don't fall on the rope...


Mike at the top of the crux - note that he is facing the wrong direction, the move kind of forces you into this position, and you have to make a plan to turn around

A not-very-flattering angle of Mike just above the crux

The exit of the first sequence results in the climber facing the wrong direction - but fortunately there is a solid helichrysum bush to grab onto, and with a swivel you end up sitting down and can swing around from there. Above the crux sequence - which is literally on the ground - you simply walk up a bushy gully for a bit, before leaving the gully to the left and finishing up on massive holds.

The pitch tops out about 50m from the summit cairn, and only about 3m vertically below it.

Neil went up second to check that Mike had set up his belay station properly, and Tony helped Lorinda aid the crux. I went up next, and managed to free climb the crux, albeit on top rope. The middle section doesn't even require hands, and the top section of the climb is very easy. Tony came up last, aiding the crux by pulling on the nut Mike placed on it.

We got our summit shot next to a surprisingly small cairn. I mean 2 rocks on top of each other. Naturally we couldn't accept this on a peak that surely has been climbed by a few people over the more than 70 years since its first ascent, so we built the cairn up to look a bit bigger.


Our new and improved summit cairn

The traditional group summit shot

We also walked to the Outer Horn side to get a look at the route we had climbed the day before. The exposure on Outer Horn is insane - and while the crux of Inner Horn was harder (well, actually I struggled with the crux on Outer Horn far more than anything on Inner Horn), Inner Horn feels like a much safer climb and is far quicker.


Our line from the day before

We decided to ab down the second of the parallel gullies - mostly because it had a very nice anchor rock above it, and we didn't bring a second rope to do the 40m ab to the nek that is described in the RD.

Mike went down first, moving the rope behind the chockstone. Tony went second. I went third - definitely the most technical ab I have ever done. When you stand on the edge of the chockstone, looking down about 12m and having to step off into the abyss you do ask a lot of questions about the gear! Nonetheless - my rope, my harness, my belay device, my locking biner and my choice of ab point - so I took in as much slack as I could and stepped into nothing! The first second or so was made up of trying to avoid hitting my head into the rock that entirely surrounded me, and by the time I was below the chockstone, the rest was easy.


Mike at the top of the abseil

My dropping below the wormhole

Lorinda came down next, and then Neil reconfigured the rope to be a double length, moved it to over the chockstone so that it could be pulled down from below, while Mike had waited one cliff band above the bottom of the abseil just so that Neil could confirm that he wouldn't ab off the end of the rope. As it turns out, it was around a 24.8m abseil on a 50m rope - so it was only just long enough.


The 2 chimneys from below

Inner Horn Cave - directly below the climb. Note the straw on the floor, so it has been used before

You have to climb back up this gully to reach the nek, before dropping back down to the trail

We walked back to the cliffy section on the north side of the nek, and I made a meal of route finding, eventually getting back into the gully after trying to find a good spot to re-enter the gully. Mike and Neil downclimbed the lower section of the rocky gully, while Neil and Lorinda pulled on the rope to get down. I figured my belay device was already on, why not just ab down.

We got to our packs - which had been roasting in the hot sun for hours - the threatening storm had long since dried up. We had lunch on the river by our packs, before commencing the long walkout to the hotel.

Mike and Neil dropped down below Bell Cave to try an alternative ledge to bypass Buggers Gully. The eventually bailed on this route and went back and over the top.

We made steady progress from here, but only reached the car park around 6PM.

Overall a great weekend out. We had hoped to bag 5 khulus, but only got 3. Now to make a plan to head back and bag Mitre and Xeni!

Our total distance was only around 40km, and our pace was quite slow - but with heavy packs full of climbing gear, and the amount of time it takes to complete a pitch with a team of 5 (especially when I am one of the 5), I think we did pretty well.

Ps. try to figure this one out - I managed to do this trip with my 33 litre pack, I was carrying the rope, and a folded up 20 litre pack and had no gear on the outside of my pack! Gear review of my new sleeping bag to follow shortly

RD put together by Neil and I:

Inner Horn South Face Direct (E)

First ascent: uncertain, possibly Chris Sommer, Andrew Porter and co. @Intrepid to confirm - AndrewP thinks it is the same route

From the Bell Traverse Trail, scramble up to the nek between the Inner
Horn and the Chessmen, about 30m of easy scrambling is required to
reach this nek.

From the nek, drop down to the grass ledge that runs below the south
face. Traverse below the cliffs of the Inner Horn and above another
small cliff band, after about 300m you will reach a grassy gully
through the lower cliff band.

Immediately above this you will see two parallel chimneys with the
right hand one having a prominent chochstone near the top. The route
follows the left chimney.

Scramble to the start via the grassy ridge, which includes a 3m easy
traverse left with exposure. The climb starts with a short E-grade
sequence with good hands and small footholds. This is followed by an
easy climb up a bushy gully till just below the top, where the chimney
is exited to the left and an easy C-grade sequence is followed to
reach the summit.

Descend via a 25m abseil down the chimney true left (right from below)
of this chimney, anchoring off a solid block immediately above it.
Take care to have the rope over the chockstone to make pulling the
rope easier.