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There was the nearly extinct, rather huge, and endemic to Ball’s Pyramid, stick insect.

It lived with but a few of its kind, on the tallest volcanic sea stack on earth.

It’s home was on the Pyramid, rising 561 metres (1842 feet) straight up out of the middle of the blue, blue Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand.

And there was the rock itself, with but a few ascents, all by large teams.

It really was the adventure to be had if one thrived on steep and obscure climbs, with a small team. Just getting there, obtaining the permits, flying over the Tasman sea on a small plane, then chartering a boat to the Pyramid loomed long before any rock would show itself.

 

The letterhead, so aptly designed by my climbing partner and artist from New York, Steve Sanford. The whimsical, the absurd, the true life adventure.

 

I’d recently moved to Australia, and in the midst of that spectacular but relatively flat continent, there was little hope of any great mountaineering challenges. But then I stumbled upon Ball’s Pyramid, described as “the world’s tallest sea tower.” It wasn’t a mountain, but what it lacked was more than made up for by its remote location, its stark and ominous presence, jutting out of an often turbulent Tasman Sea. 

A grainy photo accompanied the description I had found in a book, Scenic Australia. It showed a jagged black rock rising direct from the sea, a looming monolith with tales of attempts, crashing waves and great big sharks all replete in its history. In the photo, the only clue to its massive size was the faint outline of figures near the base and a caption: “A monolith jutting 561 metres (1,842 feet) straight out of the sea.”

It seemed like the ultimate climbing challenge in Australia—like a vertical version of the Great Barrier Reef.

As I began to look for more details, the Pyramid remained elusive, with a host of unknown factors. Just getting information on how to get there involved convoluted phone calls to Lord Howe Island, talks with various island families, good old fashioned letters, promise of a rather large cash payment to charter a fishing boat and finally a stamp of approval that we would indeed be okay to come over and climb it.

I realized their main concern was rescue. The seas and storms could be large and last for days. Lord Howe had a small fishing population, a few resorts and small hotels. There were no local climbers, no helicopters. I plied them with information on remote walls I had climbed, mountains I had scaled, the kayaking my partner Steve had done (circling Manhattan in the dark in a kayak must count for something) and they finally acquiesced, reluctantly, with an admonition that they would allow our passage and we could charter a boat in return for some favorable coverage of Lord Howe Island. There was a distinct feeling that if anything went wrong, we would be on our own. But we were in.

At the time, I’d yet to meet any Australian climbers, so I enlisted a friend, Steve Sanford, living far away in New York City. He had also moved from Colorado, so was ready to dive into any adventure involving steep rocks that came his way.  We had climbed our way across Europe, done first ascents in the shadow of the Troll Wall in Norway, and clambered up the Diamond in Colorado together in our youth. If there was one thing Ball’s Pyramid would require long before we got to the climbing, it was a sense of adventure that I knew Steve shared. And, he did kayak, which in sorting our equipment was far more useful than what we were used to packing in our big wall haul bags. It would be the first climb we had done which started with a leap into the sea.  

The closest point to Ball’s Pyramid is tiny Lord Howe Island, several hours’ flight east of Sydney. Our plane—a small twin-engined Beechcraft—was severely weight-restricted, with a baggage allowance of only 15 kilograms per passenger. Our solution? Stuff the heaviest climbing gear into our pockets and wear our climbing coats.

Steve stepped onto the scale, and it shot up to 88 kilograms (194 pounds). The flight attendant shot him a suspicious look, eyeing his slender frame and the heavy jacket rattling with gear. “Climbers are often heavier than they look,” I volunteered quickly. “Very dense muscles.” We managed to sneak on board, pitons and carabiners clinking softly inside our 20-kilogram jackets.

Lord Howe is a nearly forgotten, isolated and insular island with a few small hotels and some great diving, the very southernmost point of the Great Barrier Reef. 

Two days after arriving on Lord Howe, we left on the small chartered fishing boat. As we rounded the island’s edge, Ball’s Pyramid rose in the distance, sharp and imposing—a black shark’s tooth rising from the deep blue sea. Discovered in 1788 by Lieutenant Henry Lidgbird Ball, the Pyramid remained largely unexplored for centuries due to its sheer cliffs and remote location.

The first recorded ascent wasn’t until 1965, when a team led by Bryden Allen successfully scaled its near-vertical faces. Since then, only a handful of climbers have attempted to climb it, with the Australian government later imposing strict climbing restrictions to protect its fragile ecosystem, though you can currently go through a process and gain access for an ascent. More recently, the famed adventurer and climber Dick Smith put together a book, tracing Ball’s Pyramid history and including a chapter about our own climb, all of which he has kindly made available online. 

As we neared the Pyramid, the sun disappeared behind the towering rock, casting the boat in shadow. The difference between nearly 600 metres in print and 600 metres in reality felt monumental. Imagine six football fields stacked one on top of the other—straight up, surrounded by sharks circling the base. We felt rather inconsequential.

The Tasman Sea churned angrily beneath us, the waves crashing and frothing around the rock. What had started as a lighthearted adventure was now starting to feel deadly serious. Jumping into the raging sea seemed like an act of pure madness. To make matters worse, Steve succumbed to seasickness, leaning over the side of the boat to lose his breakfast. My stomach was in turmoil too, so I was very relieved to finally leave the rocking boat behind. With a rope tied around my waist, I plunged into the foaming sea, swimming toward the black and forbidding cliff.

There was no beach, no easy landing—just the sheer black face of the rock rising up from a seaweed covered terrace above the waves. As the boat rose on a large swell, I grabbed the rock, scaling it quickly to secure the rope. The boat drifted away, the waves threatening to slam it against the cliff. The rope tightened around my waist, and I felt it pulling me back toward the sea. For a split second, I was suspended, clinging to the cliff, the rope digging painfully into my body. I knew that I was about to be yanked back into the tumultuous sea.

The waves had receded, exposing a field of submerged rocks ten metres below. I took a leap of faith, pushing off as hard as I could to avoid being dragged down into the rocks. I flew through the air before plunging into the sea. I descended deep into the water, feeling the rush of water swirling around me.

Then, pain. My foot struck a submerged rock, twisting my ankle as a rock sliced my foot open. I surfaced, tethered to the boat by the rope, and rode the swells, the surf crashing against the rocks, threatening to throw me back against the cliff. My glasses were gone, and the world around me became a blurry mess of boat circling, waves, and black rock.

“Let go of the rope! Let go of the rope!” I screamed, furious at the deckhand for pulling me off the rock.

After the flawless ascent of the cliff, returning for a second attempt seemed improbable. My foot was bleeding, and I was being dragged behind the boat like a piece of shark bait in one of the most shark-infested waters on Earth. But we had just arrived, I’d been planning and scheming and anticipating this for months – another try perhaps?

I swam back toward the cliff, the swell carrying me up and down. Twice, I managed to scramble up the rock, only to be torn off by a higher wave, my body scraping painfully down the cliff face. Then, at last, the waves receded just as I climbed a bit higher. I found a small notch in the rock and wedged myself into it, holding on as the next wave crashed over me. I scrambled higher, desperately searching for safe ground. I was ashore, I could throw the rope back out to the boat and control my destiny. 

I discovered a rusted and bent piton from an earlier landing, hanging sideways, but it gave me a sense of security. I clipped in and could hover above the sea as Steve secured our two kayak bags and I pulled them ashore and up to my perch. Steve leaped in and having watched me battle the waves, timed his ascent to carry him up and out onto the rock on his first attempt. We were ashore, a bit battered, a bit bruised but still the first real lightweight, two-man team to get on to the Pyramid. A traverse of a few 100 metres above the sea took us out to a flat and rocky plateau set well above the sea.

Despite its barren, wind-lashed slopes, Ball’s Pyramid has a few hardy plant species; grasses and small shrubs that have adapted to its extreme coastal environment. But its greatest ecological treasure is the Lord Howe Island stick insect (Dryococelus australis).

Once thought extinct due to predation by rats on Lord Howe Island, the stick insect was rediscovered again in 2001 when a tiny population of fewer than 30 were found clinging to a single bush high on Ball’s Pyramid. Dubbed “the world’s rarest insect,” conservationists launched a breeding program back on the continent to save it from total extinction and introduce it in greater numbers back on to the island. 

In the seas around it, with Ball’s Pyramid sitting at the meeting point of tropical and temperate ocean currents, the waters abound with fish. Bright coral reefs thrive along the shore, attracting schools of pelagic fish. Galápagos sharks glide through the intensely blue water.

Above, seabirds including petrels and masked boobies nest in the Pyramid’s rocky crevices. We were soon to discover the birds had no fear, wandering through camp, pecking at our ropes and examining our shoe laces with interest. We carefully skirted their nests and ran the climbing ropes around the rocks to avoid disturbing them. We spent our first night on the island, a billion stars overhead and with the soaring and cawing birds awakening us at dawn.

We were on the far side of the Pyramid from Lord Howe Island, so the sense of being alone on a very large, very menacing rock in the midst of the ocean, with no other humans in sight permeated the atmosphere. We had a few big bottles of water, some simple food, a small stove. The Captain of the fishing boat had warned us if the waves came up it may be days before he could get close enough and that he just said as we departed “hope you are good swimmers!” All delivered with a wry smile.

We racked up our climbing gear, a mix of old school pitons and new school cams, and plenty of slings for what looked like a meandering route upward. The terraces were frequent to start with, then overhangs, caves and vertical ridges rose up between them, making for complex route finding as we wove our way upward. It was an unrateable type of climbing like we had experienced in the desert, moving from solid rock and holds, through vertical tufts and grass, over a bush, then dodging a nest or two and then around and up onto a terrace. Every once in awhile we glanced down, the sea foaming further and further below us. Were we half-way, further? Less? It was very hard to know as the route up was blocked by cliffs and the way down disappeared out of sight below us.

We climbed all day, through the heat, the sun. It was feeling more like a big wall than a simple day out, but the temperatures weren’t cold so a night out on a ledge wouldn’t be too uncomfortable. And being close to 500 metres above the sea, the day had gone well.  The climbing was more challenging than expected, but the occasional snippet of old rope, or a piton in a crack heralded we weren’t completely off track from what the first ascentionists had done. A tiny nearly horizontal ridge, a place to lay down perched high in the sky appeared as night approached.

We fired up the stove, we had soup and sandwiches, it was all very civilized. Then the sky went gray and then black and a zillion stars came out over the darkening water. The next continent to the east was South America, straight south was Antarctica. No clouds floated about, no storm really threatened. We should have brought more water, more food, that whole “stranded” idea rested in the back of our minds as we perched like the booby birds around us – on a black cliff, under the starlit sky, over the deepening blue sea.

The morning rolled in stiffly. The sleeping pads hadn’t really cushioned the shaded rock, rocking and rolling underneath us. The sea looked even further below, we were on a spaceship of rock over the sea. Perhaps we saw dark shapes swimming in the rocks below, sharks circling. Perhaps.

The rock improved up high, the vegetation faded, the ridge sharpened, the climbing was harder and steeper but more enjoyable. From a final perch we could move around to a thin vertical wall, looking down between our feet into the sea over a half vertical kilometre below us.

An old woven rope dangled from the final steep section leading up to the summit ridge, leftover from the previous ascent, too thread-worn to even touch but showing the way up the final few steps.

Steam rose from the plants, sparkling in the late morning sun. We could see Lord Howe Island again, shimmering in the distance.

Heading up the final section of steep rock and onto the summit ridge. Ropes from the previous ascent still dangling off the face. Photo: Robert Mads Anderson

At the summit ridge a few tufts of grass, space to sit quietly, our water supply now exhausted, sweat pouring from our bodies, lizards watched us with wary eyes.

The mid-day breezes rose and with the wind in our faces, we turned and began our descent, matching the swooping sea birds as they glided down.  

Rappel followed rappel, with the rope of course getting stuck high above and needing to clamber back up one of the most convoluted sections to free it, the end looped around a rock outcrop high overhead. The afternoon slid into the evening, we regained the comfort of the terraces and did short hops down the cliffs at the base and back into the shelter of Base Camp. Some extra water, some more bread and cheese provided a celebratory repast. The evening was dark, the Pyramid glowered overhead, now if we could just escape.

Again at dawn the birds soared, the lizards scuttled out into the sun, the heat went up as the sun rose in a horizontal blast across the sea. But would the boat come, or were we to spend the day searching for pools and cracking bird eggs into our pan?

Our kayak bags were stuffed and riding across the swells came the boat, a relief of more magnitude than expected, the overwhelming sense of such a short but intense adventure suddenly complete.

Our escape was a flying jump far out into the sea, swimming back out through the swell to the fishing boat—a leap back into real life, escaping the deserted desert isle of rock.

This chapter was originally included in my first book, To Everest via Antarctica, then edited for Dick Smith’s amazing overview of all the climbs of the Pyramid and a host of great photos. With the book now out of print, a PDF is here should you wish to delve into the full story of Ball’s Pyramid, with all the ascents and some great photographs of the early and not so early, ascents of the Pyramid.