Fortescue Bay

Curious about the Candlestick route climbed by Mendelt et al in the Sportsnight video. I climbed this in about 1987 or so - as can be seen in the video, it requires climbing directly out of the sea up a shallow corner, and then goes directly up the North face - there is no ledge at sea level. We slept out there the night before to get an early start before the swell came up, to avoid the dangerous conditions Mendelt experienced - it was still pretty exciting. Is Mendelt's route what is described as the Direct Route?

★Direct Route100m18  

Anyone know?

Grant Dixon and I did what we believed was the second ascent of a route called "The Wick", which doesn't appear in this guide. I think this would have been in about 1983. Description for "The Direct Route" sounds a lot like what I remember us climbing, except that we traversed right to get to the line. 

All sorts of routes and access, Chris(Basil) Rathbone and Chris (Ditto) Rathbone, yes there are two of them, unrelated, accessed the Candlestick by tossing across a home made grappling hook on a line between a spike and the cliff. This was from about halfway along the route to the Tote bolts. A kind of dodgy Tyrolean traverse was used to reach what I think might have been the ABC film route part way up. i.e. without the swim. Not sure which is riskier! This was not long after the filmed ascent.

I have gathered a lot of info from many people on 6 routes on The Candlestick and it is still coming in. Only 3 routes are on thesarvo. The terms original, normal and direct are too confusing as are descriptions of all the bolts on both sides of the gap. The real direct routes to the top are 'The Wick' (Closs et al. 1981) and The West Wall(Gray and Meffre 1997) so I think it would be better to discard the term direct and (1) Keep the 'Original(1971) CCT Route(gr16) called just that(Original) and (2) Change thesarvo name 'direct' i.e. the route with 2 bolts at the base on the ledge to the north to "The Regular Route" (gr.18) as it is not really direct. The latter seems to be the one most climbers go for? To add to the confusion , the 'Direct' route in 'Climb Tasmania' guide is not the same as the one on thesarvo. I think we should delete the term direct. If that hasn't confused you even more look out for a rewrite and topos soon!  P.R.