Australian Climber Zac Vertrees is at home on the Dogface climbing Gigantor, a route first aid climbed in 1967 by John Ewbank. Zac freed the route in 2005, but it has not seen a second free ascent since. 15 years later in 2020, he returns to re-climb it and finds it tougher than ever before.
The Dogface is notoriously scary, gear can pop, holds break, rusty bolts snap by hand and the climbing is always a sandy affair. Apparently, it helps to 'have the need for some deep form of therapy to go there'...
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Comments
Beautiful, engaging footage which really conveys what "proper trad" actually feels like! My only reservation is that some of it appears to have been edited so as to be out of sequence, which I found distracting.
Makes you really appreciate what drones can bring to climbing films.
Yes, that and some repetition, did give it a slightly disjointed feel. Overall though, great film of a fantastic route...
One thing I would like know is what the cluster of nine old carrot bolts was for - was it a belay, for instance ?
I am happy to see (and hear) that a rack of hexes still has a use on a climb of this difficulty!
There's an explanation on the actual YouTube page as a a Pinned Comment with the following response:
"There’s an 11 or 12 bolt belay there. Bunch of which I filmed when Paul mentions the bad bolts. Neither the FA or FFA used them at all. They were put in by parties trying to repeat the route on aid and getting scared. When John climbed it in one pitch for the FA he didn’t need belay stations and as you know Zac wasn’t using any bolts at all."
Thanks Fraser.