The Bell - Hooper's Route

intrepid wrote: was the grass stake still nice and wobbly?

Seemed ok to me. but there is a good chunk of rock to sling right in front of it, so I think we slung both...was pretty solid as I remember.

I did not enjoy the approach at all...we - in our infinate wisdom - decided to try climb a shortcut right near the beginning which happened to be right above a decent drop off and that put me in completely the wrong head space...needed some good fashioned "Man the @#$@# up" encouragement from Viking to get be back on course. Only really felt good again once I was tied in to the rope.

Good to see that the Bell is getting decent traffic.

This is a comment on the way we used to pitch the route:
The RD says:

3. 10m (F1). Start a little way along the ledge. Climb a short steep open-book with 2 pegs in it to a huge ledge. Walk left along the ledge some 20m and cross a loose landslip gully and belay from large erica bushes on the other side.

4. 30m (F1) The start is not very distinctive. Climb an easy, short black face on good holds to a peg which is often obscured by grass. Then when a about 10m above the ground, traverse left to a nose of rock, then around this to the left past fixed pegs to a recess. From the bottom of the recess step left a few metres to find 2 pitons at chest height. Then straight up a delicate face of rock above the pitons to a big ledge.

But we used to do the following:
3. 10m (F1). Start a little way along the ledge. Climb a short steep open-book with 2 pegs in it to a huge ledge. Walk left along the ledge some 20m and cross a loose landslip gully and belay from large erica bushes on the other side.

4. 10m E Climb an easy, short black face on good holds to a peg which is often obscured by grass

5. 20m (F1) Traverse left to a nose of rock, then around this to the left past fixed pegs to a recess. From the bottom of the recess step left a few metres to find 2 pitons at chest height. Then straight up a delicate face of rock above the pitons to a big ledge.
and sometimes, for fun:
Traverse left to a nose of rock, then around this to the left past fixed pegs to a recess. From the bottom of the recess step left a few metres to find 2 pitons at chest height. Keep going left about 5m and when the exposure is starting to trouble you, up on thin holds with no gear to the big ledge.

The reason for introducing another pitch (as in pitch 4, 10m E), is that we found the rope drag on the final pitch to be really bad - as in a question of pulling through 4m of slack before climbing the 'up' bit of the final pitch.

On the approach to the actual climbing (from the RD, pitch 2, 45m C), it took us > 3 ascents to optimise this and that didn't include the slab traverse. Once optimsed, there is only one move which is C, then rest is just steep grassy stuff. But with some exposure, as I realised when we took one of several first-timers up and had to be urged to fetch the rope out!