Will had gotten a taste for old trad lines at North Head - especially those lost to climbing antiquity. His first discovery was the well hidden "Twilights Last gleaming," a hidden gem near Shelly Beach Lookout. Many of these old-school North Head lines would not have seen an ascend for some thirty years but he went out to find them. Raping down into the void to find a line whose description reads: located about 500m north of the northern most lookout - can be an intimidating prospect. You never know what you are going to find suspended all by yourself at the end of a rope surrounded by a sea of rock in the middle of nowhere.
After Twilight he went searching again for the next lost treasure. This time he managed to locate "Temporary Like Achilles" another old school trad route in a fearful location. While the original corner climb was now quite vegetated, he noticed that the adjacent face just to the right of the corner was of suprisingly good rock quality. Even better there were enough features to place gear. So once he had completed his solo recci - dangled by himself in space to check out the line - he quickly talked me into following him down the hidden corner for the first ascent.
Locating this hidden corner at North Head is pretty impossible, but Will new where to go and we rappelled off two fairly reasonable scrubs while extending the belay over the edge (we had to clean up some of the loose debris on the edge so it would not fall on our heads from the funnel above). Will had located a nice natural belay anchor some thirty meters down and some twenty meters above the waves. This was the start of the Achilles Corner (17**) but Will decided to leave the corner and instead tackle the imposing right trending wall facing NorthEast. The crux was leaving a secure undercling ledge to another break with some 5 meters of thin climbing in between. No protection was possible in this section so it made for a balsy lead. It took him some time, but Will managed to pull through and then rejoin the corner towards the top.
Most likely an original line that had never been done so we named it: Anger be now your song (21***) |
