We drove out to Mt Victoria and took a corrugated dirt road out to Ikara Heads, parked the car and followed a fire trail out along the ridge.
The skies were grey, threatening to rain, and as we made our way across the Asgard swamp the winds started hammering along the cliff line.
I started up the crack, being buffeted by the winds as I went. I had a thinner diameter rope (for rappel) trailing from my harness, the higher I got the more the rope was whipped around by the immense wind. I eventually reached the cramped belay ledge, swapped gear, and Pete began the second pitch.
The climbing from this point involved wedging yourself up and onto a tiny ledge while placing small pieces of protection in a thin crack that ran above the roof. From there, you had to wiggle yourself out into a chimney, out past the ledge, the ground 40m below. There was no protection past this point, any slip would cause a big swing into the air, out of reach of any rock. Luckily for me, Pete kept a cool head and climbed out past the roof, turning around in the chimney, then up the face for a few more metres until there was a spot to place some protection.
I sat and belayed, pushing the thoughts of falling out of my mind. Soon it was my turn. I tried to get up onto the narrow ledge, but couldn't. The weight of the trailing rope was weighing on my harness, and I just couldn't contort my body into a small enough package while at the same time doing a reverse dip to try and sit on something solid.
I had to resort to pulling onto some of the projection so that I could pull myself up and out to a point where the ledge got wider and the roof higher. From this point I had to squeeze myself into a chimney and wriggle out towards the face, twisting and contorting until I could reach a hold. From there it was only a few metres to the next belay, but the exposure was unforgettable!
The last pitch started up a vertical crack, Pete made short work of the section and before long it was my turn again. Looking down, I saw that the end of the 60m trailing rope had wrapped itself around a dead gum tree branch due to being flailed about in the wind. I gave it a few tugs but it was going nowhere, I untied it and began to climb.
Again I struggled, unable to figure out the crack climbing required, so I pulled on some gear to aid past this section and climbed the last part to the finish.
We were once again exposed to the gale for winds, we found a slightly less exposed spot, racked our gear, and went looking for the rappel. Our idea was to abseil with two ropes, tying them together to make the second 50m abseil to the ground. This was no longer an option, but we found with enough rope stretch that we could land on a detached block at the base of the cliff line and scramble the last few metres down to the ground.
By this time it was late in the day, after a few mouthfuls of warm coffee we packed our gear and headed back, making it to the car just as the sun set. A memorable climb to say the least...
