This is the tale of an ascent of Ozymandias (via the original route) in the time of about 12 hours.
After leaving work quite late we set out from Melbourne for the long drive around eight o'clock. Hours passed by, as I drifted in and out of sleep, whilst Nick drove up the mundane Hume. At around eleven I watched a large sign whiz by proclaiming Albury was only twenty kilometers away. Disturbed by this new fact I politely enquired about the turn off to Bright. Nick mentioned he has seen it about fifty kilometers beforehand. This path would have been great if we were headed to Sydney, but sadly we were going speedily in the wrong direction. A quick perusal of the map got us back on track and we arrived at the Buffalo Gorge carpark at midnight - after adding an extra eighty kilometers to our drive. After packing our two packs for the next day, we made camp in the 'Day Use Only' hut near the hang-glider ramp.
The alarms blasted us from sleep three hours later and we grudgingly ate a few mouth fulls of cereal, shouldered our bags and started the walk down the south side of the gorge. Clouds obscured any hints of moonlight and the path was wet and slippery. We stumbled down the hillside, attempting to locate the vital cairn markers that show the path down the maze of cliffs and gullies that form this side of the gorge. We quickly became lost amongst the towering chunks of granite, forcing use to solo down a slimy, vegetated chimney to gain the track. Once the cairns were located, it was an hour of wet downwards scrambling to the bottom of the gorge. The sun was emerging from the horizon as we stumbled onto the completely flooded boulder filled creek. I have never seen this creek look so ferocious. The water was barreling down the hill at a sickening rate, and formed large waterfalls all the way down. Picking my way up and down the creek, I looked for a suitable dry path across. Eventually I gave up, took off my shoes and ploughed over to the other side. Nick managed to fall over crossing, getting quite wet but the air temperature was nice and warm so this didn't really create an issue.
By the time I reached the base of the route it was about five am and the sun was revealing the 350m high length of our route, which seemed to be one big seeping waterfall. I quickly realized any free climbing would out of the question, so I racked up and started up the first pitch. Serious doubts about doing this safely were beginning to form in my mind, especially when the first pitch involves free climbing with a definite ten-meter ground fall. I managed to pull this move off however, and reached the first bit of aid crack, which was completely covered in slime. Using my skyhook I cleaned out some slots and started aiding upwards. Soon enough, my speed was skyrocketing as my confidence increased. Nick yelled up, telling me that it was raining, which surprised me as I had just thought it was the waterfall flowing down the route. We decided to continue anyway, as the thought of walking back up the south side of the gorge was very unappealing. I fixed the rope for Nick to jumar and started self-belaying myself up the crux second pitch. By the time Nick reached the belay I was already ten meters up, aiding quickly on cam hooks and small wires. This was the first time I had used cam hooks on Ozy, and what an advantage they were. Previously, I had been forced to do move after move off shallow small sized offsets that regularly blasted from their placements. With the cam hooks, I was getting great placements almost every time.
Using this technique of self-belaying whilst Nick cleaned I made it to the Big Grassy ledge in one large continues pitch. We swapped leads and Nick forged off up the next A2 pitch whilst I chilled on the ledge and ate some food. I was feeling very tired and constantly nodded off whilst belaying. Nick's re-fresher pitch in aiding (he hadn't aided since October last year in Yosemite) was quick and he was at the belay in under an hour. I jummered up the rope expecting to see Nick self-belaying up the next A1 pitch but instead found hi m in quite some pain at the belay. His back troubles had re-surfaced during his lead.
My period of rest over, I took over the reigns and blasted up the next three pitches. I used the technique of permanently racking three sized cams on my aiders so I could just throw them in and step up, throw the next piece in, step up. The pitches went smoothly and soon Nick and I were on the small ledge below the final chimneys. The time must have been around three PM and the weather was looking fairly nasty. All day gray clouds and threatened us, but now the rumblings of a storm brewing were being heard. I was exhausted but determined to summit before dark. I scrambled up a tree then gained the chimney, which is usually a dry and easy grade 8 solo. Buffalo had other plans though, and my attempts at climbing were thwarted by slime-covered walls and no protection. Using all my strength and knee skin, I managed to gain about five meters before tumbling back down when my feet slid out. The easy solo out had proved to be impossible.
Whilst I rapped back down Nick forged a path left across a vegetated ramp and arrived below a menacing chockstone filled chimney. After getting ropes tangled and a lot of swearing I followed him to the chimney. He aided up this horrendous feature, scared shitless by the potential for the chockstones he was aiding on to come unstuck and kill us both. The final move at the top of the chimney rates as the worst single move I have ever done on a climb. You had to do a beached whale maneuver onto a chockstone with legs flailing behind. The surface you were trying to 'beach' yourself on was very rough granite coated in slime and mud. Sadly this wasn't the top. We had emerged into one of the worst nightmares a climber can find, an area we dubbed the 'Room of Despair'.
The 'Room of Despair' was small, wet alcove with six different lines to choose from. It was a pity the lines were all offwidth/chimneys and coated in slime. Nick attempted one line and backed off, then attempted to aid up a thin seam whilst standing on an eight meter high boulder. Just as he tested the piece and stood up on it, the piece blew from the crack and he disappeared out of my sight into the horrid chimney we had just climbed up. I heard an evil crash of body hitting rock and no answer to my calls. I rushed around the corner to find Nick, bloody but conscious after taking a six meter grounder onto Buffalo granite. He was in a state of shock and fairly bruised but on the most part uninjured.
A sense of desperation had overcome us. We were tired and hungry and we knew the top was only about twenty metres above us but it seemed we were stuck in this four-walled pit of hell. The two hours sleep in the last thirty-four hours was really taking it out of us but I was determined we would get out before dark. I hunted around and spotted a very slimy, dirty crack/waterfall leading up to a bulge and a possible traverse left to the top. I racked up and started aiding. The conditions were far from perfect; It felt more like caving than climbing as I quickly became saturated with oozing mud from the crack. As luck would have it I managed to link it to the top and fix the rope. Nick's painful grunts as he jumared up mixed with the sounds of thunder and rain as the heavens opened above us. We were thankful that we hadn't had to negotiate the final chimneys at night or had a more serious injury. We walked (hobbled in Nick's case) the couple of kilometers back to our car in the light rain, the route still buzzing in our minds. The route took us around twelve hours to complete, totaling nine pitches, with five pitches being A2 or harder.
After a quick dinner in the hut we made the decision to drive back to Melbourne, to seek comfort in a warm bed and our respective girlfriends. The drive was really in a state of elation/delusion/exhaustion (in that order) and we got back to Melbourne around eleven PM - after going for 40 hours straight. The next morning we both awoke, slightly bewildered and unbelieving in our ascent. It was when we struggled to get out of bed and our bodies cried out in complaint that we realized we had just done Ozy door-to-door and had the entire Sunday to soak up the Melbourne sunshine!
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