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Vertigo (32/8b+) Australia's Hardest Trad Route

dalai

5-Mar-2020
8:01:37 AM

Youtube link for Vertigo (32/8b+) Australia's Hardest Trad Route

ajfclark

5-Mar-2020
8:12:55 AM

"Definitely a true test piece, hard, scary, potentially dangerous. Its got moves that are at least V10 & V11 I would say. The gear if often quite small and interrogate to place. If you get it wrong you are potentially going to hit the ground, he as put up the hardest trad route in the country!" Zac Vertrees...

Intricate?

One Day Hero

5-Mar-2020
2:03:34 PM

He says it right in the video, has just been lost in transcription.

Good film, shame all those trees just burnt down.

dalai

5-Mar-2020
2:15:48 PM

Area burnt in this years fires? Pity as it looks like a lovely spot in the video.

One Day Hero

6-Mar-2020
10:24:23 AM

Yeah it was really nice bush up there, some of which had survived the 2003 fires.

All the crags on Orroral Ridge plus Booroomba and Billy Billy burned quite late in the fire season after a military chopper landed in long grass and kicked things off. Bit of a pisser, it looked like the ACT would get through this summer unscathed but instead we had roughly half our routes burnt out two weeks before the rain arrived.

grangrump

6-Mar-2020
11:10:20 AM

Yep good effort Dan. Been tried by a lot of good climbers over the years.

Duang Daunk

8-Mar-2020
11:41:58 AM

Hard trad climbing, now that’s real climbing, so I completely agree with it being a top effort, and it only took 25 months to up the standard since last hardest trad crack, so well done.

I’m not ever going to get up either of these routes, but I wonder how they compare to each other? It’d be great if one of the ascensionists did the other route for clarity about their grades.

Here’s the history -
>Climbing News
>13-Jan-2018 Logan Barber does Aussie new hardest trad crack.
>Australian climber Logan Barber has established the hardest pure crack climb in Australia, Japanese Deep Freeze (31/5.13d), at Mt. Buffalo, Victoria.

>The short, power-endurance line, which has remained an open project since the 1990s, involves a shallow, flaring 0.75 granite crack on overhanging terrain and challenging gear placements.

>After their successful ascents of Shark Hunt, Barber and Vertrees shifted their attention to Japanese Deep Freeze, dialing in the beta on toprope after several days, and agreeing that the line was significantly harder than The Great Shark Hunt.

One Day Hero

9-Mar-2020
10:17:06 AM

On 8-Mar-2020 Duang Daunk wrote:
>Hard trad climbing, now that’s real climbing, so I completely agree with
>it being a top effort, and it only took 25 months to up the standard since
>last hardest trad crack, so well done.

Trad yes, crack climbing....not really. The business of Vertigo is a pair of rp seams, so crimping the edges and fridge hugging is the go. It's even steeper than it looks in the video, and quite serious too (there's plenty of gear available, but stopping to place it is next to impossible). This is a very impressive ascent and I'm stoked that Dan got it done after putting in so much time and effort.

EE

9-Mar-2020
11:05:25 AM

Oops! Fixed up the description now, was a bit rushed in the upload!

IdratherbeclimbingM9

9-Mar-2020
2:15:12 PM

Youtube link for Vertigo (32/8b+) Australia's Hardest Trad Route

Great effort and result by Dan Fischer (sp?), great route, and great video!

I've led it as a clean-aid roped-solo, and regard it as a first class line worthy of ascent even in that humble fashion, so it takes my breath away that it's now been done free as a traditional route.

I also thank Dan for retaining the original route name and not trying to alter that aspect of our climbing history.

IdratherbeclimbingM9

9-Mar-2020
2:25:18 PM

On 6-Mar-2020 One Day Hero wrote:
>Yeah it was really nice bush up there, some of which had survived the 2003 fires.
>
>All the crags on Orroral Ridge plus Booroomba and Billy Billy burned quite late in the fire season after a military chopper landed in long grass and kicked things off. Bit of a pisser, it looked like the ACT would get through this summer unscathed but instead we had roughly half our routes burnt out two weeks before the rain arrived.

I saw the fires up there from a distance while they were happening and they were indeed spectacular.
Today I saw photos taken after those fires from the top of Booroomba looking back across the Hermes area, and was quite surprised at how unscathed the cliff vegetation was (relatively speaking), as I didn't think it would be anything other than scorched bleakness.

The same photographer also published pictures from Orroral Ridge showing bushfire-heat induced exfoliation of granite boulders that would render any bolts subjected to that treatment extremely suspect, but once again, despite the scorched earth in some areas, there were other pockets of vegetation that survived due the shielding effect from the fire by the same boulders.

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