Mount Buffalo cliff camping: Victoria’s terrifying portaledge stay is not for the faint

Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.

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.

Sweet dreams ... overnight on the portaledge suspended over a sheer 300 metre cliff face in the Mount Buffalo gorge.Credit: Beyond the Edge

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.

View from the top ... sleepwalkers need not apply.

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.

Having abseiled down first, Howie awaits me on the portaledge, clipping my harness to the cliffs and then departing. I am alone until morning. A 200-metre-high waterfall pours down at the head of the gorge, and the highest peaks in Victoria, Mount Bogong and Mount Feathertop, stand tall on the horizon.

When I shift, so does the portaledge, scraping against the cliffs in a frightening shriek. Beneath me, the earth yawns open as I lie down and peer over the edge into the equivalent of a 70-storey drop.

Sweet dreams? Overnight on the portaledge at Victoria’s Mount Buffalo.

As the first couple of hours pass, aided by a cooler bag of cheese and crackers that comes down the rope from above (followed later by dinner arriving the same way), the trepidation eases, but never quite leaves me entirely. In time, it becomes almost meditative – I have nowhere to go, and nowhere I can move. Life is reduced to this square metre or two hanging inside a vast mountain scene.

My home for the night – the portaledge – is little more than an aluminium frame with a stretched, tent-like floor and a tent fly that can be zipped down if it rains. There’s just enough room for two people to lie down, and I set out my sleeping bag on the airside, closest to the drop, seemingly on the edge of oblivion but all the while safely attached to the rock.

Shortly after a dinner of home-cooked pesto pasta, the sun sets and the world disappears into darkness. The lights of Porepunkah glitter into life, and Bright casts a glow from behind a ridge. A dazzling ceiling of stars is the last thing I see before falling asleep, happily alone in the dark in this most extraordinary camp.

My alarm is a radio call, pre-ordered from Howie, in time for sunrise. The early sunlight beams straight onto the North Wall, bathing me in a golden glow. Breakfast comes delivered like Uber Eats on a rope, and as I roll up my sleeping gear, I peer across the gorge to find other visitors looking back at me, instead of the view. I am indeed a painting on a wall.

FLY

Qantas flies direct to Albury, the nearest airport to Bright, from Sydney and Melbourne. See qantas.com

TOUR

Unleashed-Unlimited operates the Beyond the Edge experience. From $1798. See unleashed-unlimited.com.au/beyond-the-edge

The writer travelled courtesy of Unleashed-Unlimited.

Get exclusive travel deals delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up now.