Rusty Halo

[Geoff]

Greg Fell says:

Excellent. Felt hard for bottom end E4. Maybe it was our hands that would not fit into the crack. Do all Irishmen have hands this thin? Possible to abseil down the line. The route was very clean.

Simon Moore describes the route as:

The line consists of a technical start of immaculate face climbing with good, spaced, though thought provoking, protection, to a slight rest below the final straight. With the top in sight, and what feels like a good E4 to get you there, you must tackle the crux crack on poor finger and hand jams, then pull over the bulge to summit on one of the most asthetically pleasing pitches I have ever climbed. A popular route.

[Geoff]

I followed John McCune up this on Saturday, hats off to John - fair play for getting onto it.

So what did the humble belay bunny think.  Well, for starters this has to be one of the most fantastically inspiring lines there is at Fair Head.  It makes Track of the Cat feel positively tame.  It's hard, well hard.  At the bottom the short cracked wall is straight forward enough though thoughtful, then a nice move over onto big jugs, and then really nice climbing for about 8m up a lovely hand crack.  Then it gets steep, on smeary small not obvious foot holds with big moves up to blind hand holds but with your feet on next to nothing and the gear not that obvious.  That section is solid E4 in it's own right, about 10m or so of hard totally vertical climbing though it ends at a really good rest on big footholds. This is about 15m below the top.  From there it's off hands size for a couple of metres, but your feet are ok as you can get them in the crack, up till the overhang and then it's totally nails all the way to the top.  The jams are all there, they seemed solid on 2nd and if on the lead it's well protected, you just need to be climbing as cool as a cucumber to be able to keep it steady, place gear and not let the ropes get in your way.  There's sod all for your feet, and every so often you can get them into the crack, in between they're just flat against the face or the front of the crack.  Beat the bulge and there is still a pretty hard finger crack for about 6m to take you to the top.  It seems like there's nothing for your feet again on that, though it's got good finger jams.

So to compare, if you think of the crux of GBH, it's like that, except instead of that one move wonder over the small bulge, angle it back another 10 Degrees or so, add a small roof, extend it to about 15m, put it at the top of a 30m E4 and you kind of have it.

It is nothing short of awe inspiringly fabulous, high 5 John!

If GBH is for the aspiring hard man, then this is for the ultimately skilled crack master who earned his hard man status long long ago...