Canberra crusher Dan Fisher freed an old project called Vertigo at Tower Rocks on Orroral Ridge in fall 2019. He graded it 5.14a, the hardest trad route in Australia. Ben Sanford (website and Instagram) put together an excellent film about the climb, watch below.

He said in an interview with Vertical Life Mag here that, “Vertigo is a hard aid route out in Canberra’s south, in Namadgi National Park. I got shown the line about eight years ago. A friend dragged me out and made me get on it, and since then I have always wanted to climb it.

“It’s 25 m and broken into two very different sections. The bottom half is a flared powerful crack, I think it was given 23 back in the 1980s(?), but is probably closer to 25 (as with a lot of the sandbagged routes in the area). Then above that is the main headwall, which has two independent crack lines that run parallel to the top of the wall, and you simply fridge slap (on crimps) up these two lines standing on crystals the size of your thumbnail.”

Vertigo 5.14 First Ascent