On the weekend I climbed a rock route called ‘Bedazzled’ on the Dasler Pinnacles with a friend. We left Dunedin on friday afternoon, and my trusty-but-not-really-a-4WD subaru made it all the way to Monument hut without difficulty. It was a hard slog up to the base of the pinnacles on saturday, carrying a rope, trad rack, and 4 litres of water - we weren’t sure if we’d have a water supply, so played it safe and took our own. We ended up finding a beautiful camp site 10 minutes walk from the base, with a stream right next to the camp (this would probably dry up in late summer/autumn). The pinnacles were busy, with two groups planning to hit the north ridge in the morning (I knew three people in the valley - NZ is a very small place). We had the west face to ourselves, however.

We had originally planned to climb a different route, ‘Fly Wheel’, but the approach didn’t look very nice, so we settled on Bedazzled. Up at 5am for coffee and breakfast, we started the climb at 7am. Most of it involved easy scrambling (maybe maximum grade 10) on poor quality rock; on these sections you would need to be happy with loose rock, big run outs, and a lack of good gear placements. Between the choss were two amazing pitches on top quality rock, at about grade 15; I got lucky and had the lead on these.

You can see the line in the third photo - we may not have followed the original route for the first couple of pitches, but eventually managed to traverse across on to the buttress. The best pitch was the white face just to the right of the shady corner - about 30 metres of steep solid rock with a couple of finger sized cracks that had great gear. The other good pitch was about 50 metres above this white face.

We climbed about 250 metres over 7 pitches, and then took the rope off and scrambled the remaining 150 or so metres to the top. Then we scooted down the north ridge, packed up the tent, and raced back to the car for an 8pm departure. A great weekend which has given me a slight taste for mountain rock routes. Hopefully I’ll fit in a couple more before the summer is over.<