In search of Boar’s Head

EXPLORATORY ABSEIL OF BOAR’S HEAD – OCTOBER 1999
Lindsay B had heard of a multi pitch abseil called Boar’s Head.  So he put together a trip to sus it out, there were 8 abseilers and 2 spotters (they’d check out the exit route).

We headed up to the mountains on a cold, overcast and drizzly day on the Coast and it didn’t get much better up in the mountains.

When we got to the start, we met a couple of guides (not working that day because of weather) and they told us what to expect (sort of).  We then split into the two parties, Di K and Bob S walked down the Devils Hole track to the bottom of the cliff line with the intention of following it along to where they thought we’d come down so that they would have found a nice, easy (?) way out for us.

The rest of us abseiled down 15m into a small gully, the reported “exposure” hadn’t happened yet and even if it did with all the mist and fog we probably wouldn’t have noticed how exposed it was.

We left the rope in place on the 15m abseil just in case we didn’t find the next pitch.  There were two obvious choices, turn left or right – right went no-where but left led down a gully which was steep-ish and ended at a small waterfall, but, the good news was it did have a sling around a nearby tree.  Neither option fitted the descriptions that the guides gave us or Lindsay’s information (from another climber).

So, we scouted around a bit more and found another option, a narrow ledge on the left which went around and finished up being less than a metre wide against a rock face with a nice 50m drop down a slot on the airy side, or with a 1m step up to a sort of open topped cave about 15m long which went right through to the unknown, but with every probability of a lot of air below.  AND just to make life even more interesting, the cave had a 30+cm gap running the length of the floor all the way to the end.  The gap was about 35m deep.  It would appear that you are supposed to cross the cave negotiating your way along the gap, then, step down onto a narrow ledge on the other side and then there’s an anchor for a 50m abseil to another ledge.  There were bolts in the cave for rigging a safety line but we hadn’t brought any along so, we ruled out doing the “standard Boar’s Head route”, none of us liked the look of that gap.  At this point a Steve, Albert and Eli opted to prussic back up and call it a day, the rest opted to return to the gully and do the waterfall abseil, which was 35m and fairly straight forward – apart from the trees and scrub that I got caught up in to the amusement of the guys.

When we got down to the bottom of the waterfall abseil we discovered that there are a couple of alternatives to the “standard Boar’s Head route”, (1) abseil 50m down from the slot adjacent to the cave entry or (2) abseil the little waterfall (which is what we did), both of these abseils end up on the same ledge that you land on when you do the cave route.

Visibility had improved so we had lunch on the ledge then walked around to the next abseil.  This involved a short 2m climb down to an exposed ledge where there were bolts.  This abseil was roughly 35m of beautiful vertical rock with a partial overhang, then another 5m to the bottom.  Then came another 2 abseils.

We easily found the track to walk out, it hugged the bottom of the cliff-line and we met up with the rest of the group.  Soooo, now we’re going to have to go back with a safety line for the cave and do it all again!  Great trip Lindsay.