The Great Untoothed

The story of the first ascent of a new line on Big Glassy, Wolgan Valley, Australia

The Big Glassy cliff in the Wolgan had captured my imagination and attention for a long time.  It is a sheer smooth sweep of gently overhanging yellow rock broken only briefly by a fearful shale band and capped by enormous roofs.  Lacking the halfway ledge that often occurs on Wolgan cliffs, it is unparalleled in the Valley for its sheer size, intimidating nature and scale of chossy encounters on crumbling, weetbix-like rock. During the first ascent of Fever in 1994 I had noticed another obvious route on the right-hand side of the cliff, a stunning diagonal line that seemed bleedingly obvious and another case of “I can’t believe it hasn’t been done yet”… but there are a lot of lines like that in the Wolgan.  I mentioned it to Adam, who had done a rare repeat of the Original Route at about the same time Vera and I had done Fever.  I also floated the idea with some other friends… but I think, having been on the cliff before or heard its fearsome reputation, we were too intimidated by the scale of chossiness involved and tales of past near misses were too fresh in our minds.

Kieran Lawton had a reputation as an emerging choss-master keen to cut his teeth on some untouched territory… I merely had to mention it to him and to Julie Styles and I was swept along in a wave of enthusiasm and motivation.  The three of us trudged down the valley in April 1996, me with all of my personal equipment, Kieran and Julie with the ropes, hardware and food we would need for a three-day ascent of our route.  After a night of debauchery and partaking of fine wine and various other substances, we rose at about the crack of midday to slog up the approach hill with gear, food, and water to the base of the route. Despite my best efforts at avoidance tactics, I was somehow volunteered onto the first pitch.  40 metres of loose orange sandstone later, I belayed from a table-sized ledge.  Julie took the next lead, the pitch looked steep and she was forced, kicking and screaming, into etriers and gnarly aid moves on fearfully loose rock.  Somehow I got the next pitch, Kieran declared that it looked easy and it might help boost my faltering self esteem.  It was actually kinda fun, a few aid moves to start then back into free climbing mode… A slippery ironstone break lead around a blind roof and up into the corner again.  Great climbing on pretty good rock I thought.

 

The ground above this pitch looked thin and scary, more yellow-white chalky rock and sections of fused corner where some serious, scary hooking would be needed.  We called on Kieran to pull the best he had out of the bag for this one.  Tentatively he headed up, aiding on thin wires and tied off pitons in chalky loose sandstone reminiscent of the worst rock that Dogface, that vertical sandpit at Katoomba, has to offer.  I was having fun down there on the belay, idly chatting and joking with Julie.  Kieran seemed a bit stressed however, and got to a stopper fused section of the corner.  “What do I do now??” he called down.  “There’s no gear!”  “Just hook it!” Julie & I replied, mildly annoyed at the interruption to our idle conversation.  “But…I’ve never hooked on anything before…!” Kieran stammered, the fear and trepidation in his voice made us feign sympathy.  “You’ll be right Kieran!  No time like the present, mate… just go for it!”  It’s so easy to be blasé when you’re not the one on the sharp end. 

 

We returned to our chatter and let Kieran return, quivering, to face his fear beyond the vertical.  He gritted his teeth and placed the hook on the best looking bump on the loose crumbling wall, eyeballing it as he eased onto the marginal placement.  Didn't bother placing his hand over the hook though.  Suddenly  there was a loud crack, we were surrounded by a shower of whizzing projectiles… and Kieran came hurtling down out of the sky towards us.  The rope went tight, I slammed into the belay and everything was quiet again.  We called up to the lifeless, unmoving body above us.  “You OK??”  “I fink tho”  replied Kieran… there was a new lisp to his voice.  “Lotht bof me fron' teef”  “Oh shit” Jules & I replied in unison… less worried about the dental bill than the guilt we felt at having egged him on to go for the hook moves through what we knew was dangerous territory.

 

We evacuated Kieran out of there and $1000 in medical bills, two false teeth and a couple of months later we returned to complete our route, The Big Glassy Corner, over two days.  In the end despite the drama it was a good fun trip with a lot of laughs, which after all is what climbing with your friends is all about.