Thailand-Phi Phi Don-Climbing Hin Tak (Day 26)

We were debating between going to drinking water wall (30 minute walk) or trying to catch a longtail to go climb at Oyster Blade with a four pitch route I really wanted to do.  100 baht each for the longtail ride and no walking, Ram was in.

We hoped this longtail right in front of the restraunt we ate lunch at and were headed off.  The boat quickly went past the Oyster Blade and we ended up further in the bay at Hin Tak wall.  That’s ok there is a bunch of good looking climbing at Hin Tak including a 5 pitch route called Happy Banana 5.11a I really wanted to do.  Ram talked to the boatman and got him to come back at 6 pm when we hoped to be off the route.

Hin Tak (broken rock in thai) is now the home of Ao Ling (Monkey Bay in thai) and monkeys there were.  Luckily, the start of the climb was 40 ft of 5.5 to a big ledge so we took everything up there and clipped it in.
I led off on the first pitch up a dihedral and it went pretty straight forward at about 5.10a.
Anja fired of pitches 3 and 4 together to a nice huge belay ledge. 
The climb had some great views of the bay and stupid tourists.  About every 5 minutes longtail boat would come in with tourist.  THEY WERE NUTS!!!!  All these people would climb out of the boat and walk into a herd of monkeys.  About every 5th person hanging out in a bunch of monkeys would scream and run away they were getting scratched and bite.  SCATCHY! 

The 4th pitch was really tough, Anja had to hang and Ram and I pulled on the quickdraws through the crux.  We would have got it but we were rushing a little at this to make it back to the beach to met boatman.  Right…

The huge belay ledge at the base of pitch 5.

Our anchor was good but had some reminants of the legendary bad bolts of thailand.
The last pitch was incredible.  One of the coolest pitches I have ever done.  The top of the pitch ends about 20 ft out from the belay 200’ ft directly over the beach. 
This means when you lower off you have to get pulled back into the belay.  Otherwise, you’d just dangle above the beach.

Headed down on rappel, opps its already 6.

Luckily the longtail boatman hungout even though we were late getting down.  Also since it was low tide we couldn’t get out to the boat without swimming but a fisherman with a kayak gave us a ride out to the boat.  What a fun day of climbing and longtails!!!