The obvious ending choice in Cairn waits at the Last Shelter. The useful choice starts much earlier: which detours leave Aava with permanent tools instead of another pocket of food. A direct line can save minutes and still produce a worse summit attempt if it skips the glowing gloves, Troglodyte pitons, larger containers, weather tools, or the shelter where the final push should be stocked.
This spoiler-heavy walkthrough follows that equipment route from the training gym through Mount Kami, then explains how to see both endings from one save. Cairn allows many lines across the same face, so the directions below identify safer landmarks, valuable detours, and exit conditions rather than pretending that one painted path is mandatory.
Read a wall before spending rope on it
Every long face should begin in the zoomed-out view. Look for a chain of large ledges, a place where all four limbs can settle, and a surface that will actually accept a piton. A shorter line through glossy brown rock can be more expensive than a longer gray face because dense rock has poorer holds and rejects normal pitons. Rain and wind also turn an otherwise comfortable route into a bad commitment.
Once on the wall, judge the position by Aava rather than by height:
- A hand or foot lies flat: it is bracing, not gripping. Reset that limb before moving another one.
- One limb shakes or her breathing accelerates: weight distribution is failing. Move back to a larger hold instead of reaching higher.
- A recovery pulse is green: the stance is doing useful work. Yellow means the next move should improve the stance, not extend it.
- Four holds feel secure but the next section is blind: place a piton now. Off belay to restore stamina and open the backpack before the wall creates an emergency.
Chalk improves the next 12 hand placements, so use it to cross a known patch of weak rock rather than applying it automatically on a walkable ledge. Climbot can compost packaging and mountain trash into more chalk, but that process takes time. Piton scraps are similarly useful only if Climbot is available to turn them into protection and later retrieve placed pitons from safe ground.
Manual limb selection is an escape tool. Let the automatic selection handle ordinary movement, then take control when it proposes the wrong limb, when a gust is approaching, or when Aava needs to move one weak contact without disturbing three good ones. On ice, change the rule: chalk and grip food do not improve the ice contact. Aim axes and crampons at cracks; if no crack is reachable, charge the strike, accept the extra stamina cost, and recover sooner.
Tenzen decides whether Kami begins with tools or debt
Only the first three gym walls are required, but leaving immediately wastes a safe training space and several supplies. Complete the optional walls while a fall is cheap. Search the gym for coins, a bottle, pitons, and the box reached through the Climbing Room exit. That box contains the beekeeper map and useful starting gear. The map matters on the Escarpment because it turns a blind search for the cave into a planned detour.
On Tenzen itself, practice the rhythm that the summit will later demand:
- Fill the bottle at the first water source and repair damaged pitons at the bivouac.
- Choose the face with visible cracks and intermediate shelves, even when a bare vertical line looks faster.
- Use the left side of the middle section to forage and refill, then favor the far-right platforms on the final section for stand-up recovery.
- Reach the rail overlooking Kami with intact protection. Tenzen is a test, not a place to arrive depleted for The Twisted Ridge.
The Twisted Ridge is short. Use it to compost the bottle below the opening tent and confirm that Climbot can retrieve your protection. The first real inventory decision comes at the Escarpment.
The lower mountain pays for four detours
From the Escarpment through the Village, altitude is less valuable than the upgrades hidden beside it. These are the detours that keep paying after their food is gone:
| Route band | Detour worth taking | Why it survives the next bivouac |
|---|---|---|
| Escarpment | Rappel into the beekeeper cave between the fallen vending machine and the right wall | The Super Honey recipe turns later ingredients into a stronger planned ration; the cave also proves that descending from above can be safer than attacking a hidden entrance from below. |
| Split Rock and Waterfall | Take the right-side Split Rock route, visit the fish farm, then enter the Shortcut from above | The fish farm supplies water, trout, and the Cave-Style Trout recipe. Rappelling into the Shortcut avoids treating its misleading name as a mandatory hard ascent. |
| Village lower room | Enter the bottom-right bedroom before climbing through the settlement | Rody’s letter can later be delivered at the Vault for the thermos. It is easy to miss because the room is below the more inviting central entrance. |
| Village crystal chamber | Climb above the glowing room, cross the inner waterfall rooms, and take the blue gloves | The glowing gloves make darkness and bad visibility easier to manage. The chamber forbids pitons, so enter with taped fingers and leave the crystals themselves alone as holds. |
The safest sequence is flexible. At the Escarpment, refill behind the bulletin board before exploring the beekeeper cave. The Arche then supplies water, a bear-proof box, and the first clear lesson in reading old ropes and windows as route markers. At Split Rock, inspect the lower cable-car side but do not force the Shortcut from its base. Climb the right branch to the scientist camp, take the Mountain Stew recipe, and continue to the Waterfall.
The Waterfall fish farm is a reset room. Catch trout, cook only enough to free inventory space, refill every ordinary water container, and leave from the rear opening to rappel into the cable-car station. The Shortcut contains medicine, a recipe, fireworks, and food, but its real value is route economy: explore it while gravity works for you, then return along the guarded ledges to the Waterfall instead of climbing the whole exterior face.
At the Village, collect Rody’s letter before going upward. The glowing-glove detour lies beyond the central settlement: climb inside the crystal room, pass the waterfall chambers, take the gloves, break the low limestone obstruction, and use the bath-room bivouac. The Troglodyte wall map there marks the three doll pieces that define the next circuit.
Run the Child, Standing Stones, and Vault as one loop
The three areas are connected, and different walkthroughs list them in different orders because the mountain does not force a single circuit. A clean route from the Village is: enter the Standing Stones, turn right through the arch for the Child, return for the Standing Stones piece, then move left to the Vault. This keeps the three doll pieces and the Vault letter handoff in one sweep.
The Child gives permission to cross dense rock
Climb the guardian statue from its right side, enter through the head, and secure the entrance before crossing the interior gap. Normal pitons cannot enter the dense inner rock. Reach the far shrine for the first Troglodyte piton, which is reusable and can be placed in rock that rejects ordinary protection. On the ledges above the statue, collect Doll Part III before returning toward the Standing Stones.
Do not spend the Troglodyte piton merely because it works everywhere. Save it for a dense patch that separates two safe normal-piton zones; then recover it as soon as solid ground and Climbot make that possible.
The Standing Stones piece is a navigation check
From the guardian cave, take the stairs on the right, jump the broken gap, and climb around the arches. The colored wall marks identify the doll route. Collect Doll Part II on the upper-left side, then continue left rather than climbing straight toward the Terraces. That direction reaches the Vault and avoids leaving the final part below you.
The Vault converts an old letter into summit gear
Rappel to the goats and enter Johanna’s cave. After the first conversation, speak to her again and deliver Rody’s letter from the Village. She gives Aava the thermos, which preserves a hot drink instead of forcing it to cool while climbing. Refill empty bottles with goat milk, but keep the quick-access flask useful for plain water.
Above Johanna’s cave, use the marked canyon route to Doll Part I. The three pieces assemble automatically into the Troglodyte Doll, a limited-use item that can clear bad weather. Preserve its charges for exposed upper faces; clearing ordinary rain in a safe middle section wastes the reason you made the circuit.
Leave toward the Terraces and take the Big Chalk Bag in the council cave. It raises chalk capacity from three to five and releases backpack slots that would otherwise carry loose climbing support. At the Mirror, fill water and catch trout. At the Two Hundred Steps, the bear cave above the save point contains the Survival Blanket. Enter calmly, take the blanket, and walk out without approaching or provoking the bear. The blanket creates a recovery option away from a full bivouac, which matters more than the nearby recipe.
Descend to the Ancient before entering the Palace of Wind
The suspension bridge above the Two Hundred Steps appears to point directly into the Palace. Look below it first. Rappel from the left side to the broken stairs and descend into the Ancient. The interior route leads to a second Troglodyte piton; the exit then winds through dense rock and waterfalls back toward the bridge level.
That detour should leave you with two dense-rock pitons before the upper mountain starts combining bad surfaces with wind. If the ascent out of the Ancient feels sealed, follow the interior wind path and look above broken stairs for the next walkway. Place an ordinary piton at every brief normal-rock window instead of carrying the rope across the entire dense band.
The Palace of Wind is a vertical building, not one exterior climb. Use open windows to change floors whenever an interior staircase is blocked. Water is available inside, so do not give inventory priority to plain bottles over food, tape, or medicine when entering.
Help the Crystal Cutter before leaving. One shard is in the lower stair cutout, two are around the coffins in his chamber, and the fourth is above the cave entrance on the stair side. Returning four shards earns the small windmill, which spins before a gust. Use that warning to stop with four contacts planted; trying to race a gust to the next ledge turns a forecast into a fall.
The nearby upper room also contains the Big Flask. It is empty when equipped, so refill it before departing. The flask, thermos, two Troglodyte pitons, larger chalk bag, glowing gloves, and Survival Blanket are the equipment state that makes the next band controlled rather than improvised.
Spend ordinary supplies before Peril, preserve summit supplies after it
Peril is the first wall where an early piton budget can fail at the top. Use the zoomed route view to identify the small recovery ledge roughly a quarter of the way up, then divide the face around that point. Retrieve protection there if Climbot can reach it; do not assume every piton placed below an overhang will return. Grip, grit, and chalk are appropriate here because this is still rock.
After the long wall, Marco’s moonshine sequence ends with Aava needing water. The reviewed route can consume the drinkable items available during that recovery. Do not build the final plan around a rare infusion surviving the scene. Refill at the cave on the far right after the cutscene, and take the origami lynx there only if you want its later memorial interaction.
The Dome is mostly a recovery and story space. Collect Mountain Rice if desired, but the Troglodyte badge at the resin wells is a second-playthrough reward, not a first-run requirement. Move from the Dome to the Needle with warming food, focus, health recovery, chalk, and both special pitons available.
At the Needle, use the smaller pillar and jump to the mid-level doorway instead of forcing the column from its base. Roberto’s final letter and the Pearly Edelweiss are inside. The flower offers a one-time recovery choice after death; keep it for the upper mountain rather than treating it as a reason to take a reckless line immediately.
The Secret introduces ice. Practice on the first low ice face, confirm that a bouncing axe or crampon is a weak contact, and favor visible cracks before spending stamina on charged strikes. Chalk and grip boosts belong on rock; focus is the useful boost on ice. Inside the final guardian room, collect the third Troglodyte piton, then cross the bridge into the Last Shelter.
The Last Shelter contains the only ending fork
Marco asks whether Aava will descend or continue. This is the decision that changes the ending:
- Go back down: this triggers the Home ending, awards its achievement, and gives the Capsule keepsake after the credits.
- Continue the ascent: this opens the Blades, Sea of Seracs, Immaculate, and Kami route toward the Part of a Whole ending.
You do not need a second full climb to see both. Take the Home choice first, watch the credits, then load the provided save at the shelter decision and choose Continue the ascent. The later choice to accept or refuse Damas’s request does not replace this fork.
Before committing to the summit route, empty the shelter methodically. Fill the thermos and other temperature-safe containers with goat milk or another warm drink, refill the Big Flask with water, repair all normal pitons, tape Aava’s fingers, and prepare focus for ice plus grit, burst, warmth, and healing for the final damage. Keep some chalk for mixed rock, but do not let it displace warming supplies when the next major faces are ice.
The final push removes one safety layer at a time
The Blades reduces the size of every later mistake
Begin beside the rock where possible and place repaired pitons before the ice becomes exposed. Periodic avalanche bursts arrive near the top. After Aava collapses, the run continues with portions of health, hunger, thirst, and warmth capacity unavailable. This is intended story damage, not evidence that you missed a healing item. Recalculate every ration against the smaller maximum instead of trying to restore bars the route has removed.
The Sea of Seracs turns movement into resource drain
Use the glowing save cove on the left, then move toward the back-right route. Deep snow slows Aava, so burst and grit have value even when she is walking. Follow the left wall upward, cross the next snow field, and keep right after Climbot begins to fail. A bivouac lies to the left of the dark terraces; the path onward to the Immaculate is on the right.
The Immaculate offers a surface choice, not a secret answer
At the first split, the left branch is shorter and requires less climbing. At the main face beyond it, choose between ice on the left and more visibly cracked rock on the right. Use the material your remaining inventory supports: focus and patient charged placements for ice, or chalk and ordinary pitons for rock. The upper crack line bends left into a ramp and the last bivouac before Kami.
Kami lets you spend pitons before it takes them away
Leave the bivouac to the left and walk around the lower ice so the climb begins higher on the face. Use pitons freely through the middle because a ledge allows recovery and retrieval. Continue right toward the split wall with useful cracks on both sides.
When Climbot fails, the prompts are Continue with Climbot and Cut the rope. This choice changes the summit scene, not which ending unlocks. After the decision, pitons are no longer available, so the remaining route is a pure stance problem: shorten reaches, accept downward corrections, and stop whenever four contacts can carry Aava’s weight. The Part of a Whole ending follows the final summit prompts.
The route is complete when the Home ending has been recorded from the shelter save and the reloaded Continue branch reaches the summit. The Climbot decision can be replayed for its scene variation, but it is not a third ending. Recipes, keepsakes, Free Solo lines, second-playthrough resin rewards, and full achievement cleanup remain separate jobs; none should send a first ascent back down the entire mountain.
Evidence boundary and official media
The Steam listing for Cairn supplied AppID 1588550, the development and publishing credit, release metadata, supported features, and the four untouched 1920×1080 JPG files displayed above. The open-route design and survival premise were checked against the official Cairn page. Climbing signals, piton practice, chalk duration, manual limb selection, dense-rock behavior, and ice technique were checked against The Game Bakers creative director Emeric Thoa’s official PlayStation Blog guide. The March quality-of-life update and July delayed-DLC boundary come from official Steam announcements. Region order, upgrade locations, route options, and the ending reload were reconciled across readable community guides and verified walkthrough references; blocked Neoseeker pages and warning-marked Steam guides did not support any key claim alone.