Egon Kirschner had the bright idea of not setting off too early, so as not to spend too long climbing in the sun. We didn't spend very long climbing in the sun, but we did come quite close to being able to enjoy a night on a ledge near the top of the route.
The first couple of pitches were relatively easy. The third got a bit more exciting, however. Here it was necessary to climb up a corner from the belay and then somehow traverse left across a horizontal crack. This was a lot harder than it looked, and it soon became clear why the guidebook says A0 for this pitch. Egon led the traverse swinging from peg to peg, and then had to lower himself perhaps fifteen feet from a long piece of tat hanging from the last peg. While hanging at the end of the tat it was then possible to pendulum leftwards and reach more pegs, then using these to climb back up again to the continuation of the horizontal crack, in which four not entirely confidence-inspiring pegs made up the hanging belay. It didn't look much fun to lead, and wasn't much fun to second either. I was much happier once I had clipped the next two pegs of the next pitch.For a while the climbing was easier, and then came a long steep corner crack, graded at VI+ in the guidebook. This should have been a lovely E1 pitch, but after my summer of activity I was not up to sustained E1 climbing without rests. Soon I clipped into a peg, and I ended up aiding the entire pitch with a combination of pegs and the thankfully plentiful nut placements.
After this came a deep wide crack with few holds. Egon led this not without cursing and struggle. He soon took his rucksack off and left this on a ledge for me to carry while seconding. Protection was almost non-existant, but a fall would have seen him not so much fall from the wall, but rather further into the crack and probably get stuck. Thankfully it did not come to this.Presently we came to a large vegetated ledge on which the guidebook indicated we should traverse a long way to the right. By this time it was clear that we did not have very much daylight left. Unfortunately it was not clear which of the not very inviting exits from the ledge it was necessary to take, and I ended up traversing rather too far. By the time we had traversed back again we had even less light left.
Egon then led up a loose and unpleasant wide corner, from the top of which our goal was in sight. Just one more pitch separated us from the summit plateau. Unfortunately this turned out to be one of the hardest of the route, a wide hold-less crack a bit reminiscent of the top of Wall Buttress at Stanage only longer and with rather less friction.
Had this been a one pitch climb on a crag I would not have put myself through it. However, given that Egon had led the unpleasant aid pitch and the first unpleasant crack, I could not very well shirk this lead. I had been saving my last few drops of water for the summit, but my mouth was dry and I couldn't hold out any longer, so I emptied the water bottle before setting off. I too found myself taking off my rucksack and leaving it clipped to a runner before things got really difficult. Somehow through a combination of squeezing, writhing, panting and pausing apparently without holds but somehow wedged into the crack to get my breath back I got to the top. Egon then had the no more agreeable job of getting his way up there carrying both rucksacks, which he managed with help from the rope. It was now nine o'clock.In the wood on top it was pitch dark. In an act of generosity Egon cut his apple in two with his nut key and gave me half. We then still had the business of getting down before us, for which we had no map and only vague instructions, which proved to be next to no use whatsoever. It took us a total of three hours staggering around in the dark before we eventually found our way down to the road, still miles from the car. Thankfully Andrea managed to persuade Renate to come and pick us up, otherwise it would probably have been another two hours before we got back to our car.
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