Victoria’s terrifying cliff stay is not for the faint-hearted

Howie Dawson calls it the big reveal. Stepping between granite boulders, he stops at the edge of the gorge, the great granite chasm that splits Mount Buffalo open like a hatchet cut, and points across to one of the highest and most imposing cliffs in Australia.

“There it is,” he says.

Hanging from the cliffs, surreal and audacious, is a tiny camp of sorts – a climbers’ portaledge, suspended above a 250-metre drop. It looks strangely like a painting hanging in a gallery and in just a few hours I will be the subject in that painting: Still Life on a Ledge.

Billed as the world’s highest cliff-camping experience, Beyond the Edge is a heady glimpse into the world of big-wall rock climbing, without the need to climb.

On many of the world’s biggest cliffs, climbers overnight on tiny portaledges clipped to the rock, almost literally sleeping on air. Such nights out are a rare necessity in Australian climbing, though the North Wall of Mount Buffalo’s Gorge, where the portaledge hangs, is one exception.

It was while climbing here, on a challenging route named Ozymandias that typically takes climbers several days to complete, sleeping on portaledges each night, that Dawson dreamed up the idea of turning the experience into a commercial trip. Now even non-climbers can take the brave step into thin air.

To spend a night on this portaledge, you don’t need experience or expertise, but you do need to learn the literal ropes. After the big reveal, the afternoon is spent abseiling on a nearby outcrop, gaining confidence in the art of descending on a rope and ascending again on jumars – handheld devices, attached to foot loops, that slide up the ropes but don’t slide back down. It’s these jumars that allow you to ascend the ropes, ladder-style, on the climb out from the ledge the next morning.

By late afternoon, the portaledge calls, and there’s a cocktail of emotions as I stand atop the North Wall’s cliffs, tied umbilically to the mountain but about to step backwards over its edge. The portaledge hangs like a glorified hammock about 30 metres below the clifftops, but the world tumbles away another 250 metres below. It’s like stepping into a void as I inch backward over the cliff edge. I’m unsure whether to feel terrified or fortified as I look over my shoulder into an abyss.