LORD OF THE RINGS

For a long time Lord of the Rings was ‘Serious Young Lizards’, the working name given to a project bolted by Kim Carrigan. This project was located on Henry Bolte Wall, better known as ‘Dogger’s Gully’; a most salubrious venue, being home to a bunch of excellent, hard routes to dog, all-day shade, a delightful outlook over the patchwork of paddocks and bumblies toddling up Watchtower Face, not to mention a tiered viewing platform from which spectators, photogs and hecklers can hurl beta, direction and insults – and from where Kim probably first spotted the line.

‘The blank line straight up the middle was obvious just unlikely,’ Kim says, ‘I rapped it and it was obviously a project!’ He bolted the route as an independent line to the right of Slinkin’ Leopard (28), although once he started working the route he skipped the start (presumably because it was too hard) and traversed in from the left via Wackford Squeers (26). At the time Kim was sponsored by Mammut, which had given him a bunch of bolts with a free-moving ring (apparently they were designed as abseil bolts for caving). ‘These were an early Mammut product and I had a few bags of them, so I thought why not…’ Little did