Erciyes

Climbed Ellingwood Ledges (Arete) route with my friend Rob Shaw. We did the standard start up to the red tower, then scrambled up to the start of the 2 harder roped pitches. We used a topo from naclassics.com. Since there was a party of 3 on the standard 5.5 pitch, we opted for 5.9 varaiation. Rob won that lead. It was nice solid rock and very easy to protect. Quite a few fixed pins on that pitch. The 3some was now on the standard pitch, so we again took a variation. It looks to be 5.7 on the topo but we both agreed it felt as hard as the 5.9 we just got off of! From there it was a scramble to the summit. Amazing route. Alber Ellingwood had some serious 'guts' to climb that in 1925.