62 | AG Outdoor
...he is a legend, revered for his legacy of hard, bold
routes and mythologised as one of the leading figures of
the early 1980s, the golden era of Australian climbing.
PROFILE | MARK MOORHEAD
outside of the Australian climbing community.
But inside it, he is a legend, revered for his legacy
of hard, bold routes and mythologised as one of
the leading figures of the early 1980s, the golden
era of Australian climbing.
IN THE BEGINNING
Mark was born on 9 June 1960, a skinny-limbed,
blonde-haired little boy, the second of three chil-
dren. His mother Peggy was a home-maker, while
his father Bill was a long-time journalist. Mark,
who by all accounts was very bright, studied town
planning at Melbourne University. It was as a first
year uni student on a trip to the Grampians with
the Melbourne University Mountaineering Club
that Mark first discovered climbing. Peter Martin
(who was a third year uni student at the time)
took Mark on that first trip. ‘He took to the rock
naturally,’ Martin tells me over the phone, ‘he led
the third pitch of a grade-11 on the second day of
the trip wearing just sand shoes.’
It didn’t take long for the climbing obsession to
take grip. Mark’s best friend and climbing partner,
Jon Muir, the legendary Australian mountaineer
and adventurer, tells me that one day Mark was
heading into an exam in his second year at uni-
versity when he thought to himself, ‘This isn’t
what I want to do, it’s a good day for the beach.’
So he turned around and never went back.
At 19 Moorhead became one of the first gen-
eration of Australian climbers to climb full-time,
moving to Mt Arapiles in the Wimmera and living
cheaply on the dole at a campground called the
Pines. One of the world’s great crags, Arapiles
was home to an intense climbing scene. Mark
revelled in this environment and within a year
or two of starting climbing in 1978, he’d put up
the hard and bold grade-24, Terminal Drive. In
the summer of 1981 he climbed a new route he
dubbed Cobwebs. Mark gave it grade 26, but in
the intervening years it has become commonly
accepted by climbers that it is 28 or 29, meaning
that in 1981 it would easily have been in the top
ten hardest routes in the world.
It wasn’t long after starting climbing that Mark
travelled to New Zealand for his first mountain-
eering season. When Peter Martin first took Mark
climbing he remembers him as a tall, skinny yet
athletic youth, but after returning from that first
season in New Zealand the physical transforma-
tion was remarkable. ‘He came back very strong,
he was almost unrecognisable,’ he says.
It was in the New Zealand Alps in 1980 that
the group of climbers Mark was to become syn-
onymous with was formed – the International
Turkey Patrol (ITP). Will Steffen, in his book
about Australian mountaineering, Himalayan
Dreaming, writes ‘The ITP...came to be associated
with a group of four young Australian climb-
ers. Muir and [Roddy] Mackenzie were founding
members and two young Victorian climbers, Mark
Moorhead and Craig Nottle, joined them in their
most memorable exploits.’ The four formed a
formidable team, their irreverent sense of humour
only partially masking their immense drive and
ambition.PUSHING THE LIMITS
One of the most memorable Australian
mountaineering photos appears in a Mountain
Design’s advertisement from the early 1980s. It’s
a picture of extremis: shot from above it shows
a man’s body jammed behind a slung flake from
which a chain of slings leads downwards to a
figure hand-over-handing into a murky whiteabyss below – Mark Moorhead.
The photo is from the ITP’s first attempt
at climbing the South-West Ridge of Chang-
abang (6864m) in the Indian Himalaya in 1982,
an objective that had been suggested to them
by the famous climbing doctor, Jim Duff, who
they’d met in a hut in New Zealand. To prepare
for Changabang, Mark, Jon Muir and Craig Nottle
headed to the European Alps in early 1982. Their
‘training’ turned into a phenomenal season. The
three climbed the North Faces of Les Droites and
the Charmoz, the Central Pillar of Freney on Mt
Blanc, the Walker Spur on the Grandes Jorasses
and the Dru Couloir. Most climbers would have
been burnt out after such a season, but the ITP
continued on to the Changabang.Two of Australia’s greatest ever
climbers; Mark Moorhead (leading)
and Kim Carrigan on the fi rst ascent
of the second pitch (grade 25) of
Holy Moses (26) in November 1981,
on the Bluff s, at Mt Arapiles.
Pic: Glenn Tempest