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Australian Climbs with great Mythology 3-Feb-2005 At 5:08:54 PM oweng

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One of the things I love about climbing is finally getting up the nerve to do a route you've read stories about, daydreamed about doing whilst at work, listened to other people describe their epics on, or simply spied in a guidebook and been somehow drawn to by the pictures and descriptions there-in.

The climbing route that best represents this would have to be the original route up the north wall of the Eiger. It would be an amazing experience to climb that route after reading all the stories of the epic early ascents, and finally getting a look at the 'spider', 'difficult crack', 'flatiron' and other features that ive visualised from their descriptions. Unfortunately I lack the balls / skills / commitment required to pursue climbing such a route.

Luckily however there are routes in this country that have mythologies of their own, that whilst not up to that of the Eiger still serve to fire the imagination.

I'm interested in routes that have something distinctive about them that fires the imagination, be it an epic story of the first ascent, a distinctive piece of rock architecture on the route that you just have to experience first hand, or something more mundane like remnant pieces of unusual fixed protection from the first ascent.

There are two routes in Tasmania that I think have substantial mythology associated with them. One is the free route on the Totem Pole, and the other is:

McDonough 17, at Fingal offers 220 odd metres of varied climbing up a brooding darkly menacing face. Whilst doing work experience at Launceston Council I started climbing with a guy who the year before had pulled a loose block onto himself whilst leading the crux pitch, resulting in a nasty concussion, lots of blood, a epic retreat, and a great story told with great gusto to young climbers like myself 'under his wing'. Not long after I stumbled on a copy of Joe Friends book 'Classic Climbs of Australia' which featured excerpts from Bob McMahon's article on Fingal in Peaks Magazine. The Peaks article described the epic attempt on the 1st ascent by Bob McMahon, Mick McHugh and Peter Jackson in 1969, which turned into a serious retreat after McHugh had his head caved in by a falling rock during the ascent. A nightmare of difficult abseils and jammed ropes followed.

These stories fired my imagination, and although several years passed before I climbed the route (which meant the route became relatively straightforward for me difficulty wise), doing the route was still a great source of personal satisfaction. I was able to check my mental image of the route against the reality.

Those of you that have read through to the bottom of this post will probably be wondering what the point of all this rambling is.....

What Australian routes out there have a great mythology associated with them? What routes are you inspired to do by the stories you have heard about other peoples ascents of them? Are there routes out there that you know technically that you would be able to do, but that some aspect of the mythology of the route (stories of injuries, loose rock, marginal protection etc) has thus far kept you off?