I chose to turn around, when I remembered it was my mum’s birthday in three days time. When I remembered that, I knew I had to descend.
I descended the steep and loose gully, managing to dislodge one rock only, but it was the size of a rock melon, and it kept tumbling. Eventually, it stopped.
I arrived back at the base of the southern ridge. Back at the big rock. I had to have another crack. Another attempt, even further out left. Which also ended in cliffs. Retreat and descend. Some loose climbing down a tree. Eventually back at the base of the big rock for the third time.
On my fourth attempt, I followed the gully to the right of the south ridge. Which had a stupendously dense tea tree thicket in it. I was worried for my eye balls, imagining it skewered on the end of a sharp tea tree branch. I battled my way up, as gracefully as I could. I was sweating and panting hard. I was rising above the forest, until eventually I arrived to a bit of a notch that had to be scrambled. I did, only to arrive to the base of a giant overhang and a chimney. For the third time, I knew I had to go back down.
I had one serious attempt left in me. So I tried the gully even further to the right. Which had a good feeling about it. For the fifth attempt, I figured I was onto something. This time, the gully would go. Surely!
At one point, I had to crawl through a hole beneath the cliff to keep going up. I did this, having to take my pack off and pull it through. I could smell the summit breeze. And as I kept going up, I eventually arrived to the same place I was at about 45 minutes before. The same bloody chimney and overhang I got to at the end of my last attempt!
There was simply no way up.
I retreated back to the base of the southern spur to the big rock. I had spent four hours trying five different gullies; and all of them ended in cliffs.
I had run out of time. The mountain was not going to let me pass.