Trad. Climbing

UK

Back at home hard trad. climbing, not least the current still in vogue, Hard Grit, has siphoned off the effort going into top sport routes. So what is there to show for all the hype and effort. Well quite a lot actually it seems. Continuing their great runs over the last few years Messrs Bentley and Dunne have released Equilbrum and Breathless respectively during 2000. Both were graded E10 by their respective creators and both are reputed to have 8b/8b+ climbing on them. Equilibrum has the benefit of good but low gear which necessitates a fast runner for a belayer if the ground is to be avoided, whilst Breathless has poor gear where it matters most, ie on the crux headwall, from which a fall is said to be strongly inadvisable. Both routes have something of a history; Moon first top-roped Equilibrum in the early nineties but never considered a possible lead, whereas Breathless had been tried by Lakes activist Dave Birkett but to no avail. Breathless is Dunne's second E10, his first from 1995, Divided Years, is in the Mourn Mountains of Ireland.

Down in the deep south Mark Edwards continues his campaign to increase Cornwall’s desperate routes. In the last couple of years he’s added Human Skewer (E9 6c) in Zawn Rinny and then Rewind (E10, 7a) at Carn Vellan. The latter is a bolt free version of Blue Sky Lightening (8a+) which has evolved from a sport route to one of the UK’s hardest trad. leads. Edwards had in fact previously climbed the route on trad. gear but this had been pre-placed. Poor rock (in places) and ground fall potential from high up add interest!

Other meritorious claims this year which are not far off the pace are Talbot Horizon (E9 6c) on Scafell from Dave Birkett, Harder, Faster (E9, 6c) a direct finish to Johnny Dawes' Ghia at Black Rocks by Charlie Woodburn; the long-standing project above Martin Veale’s Ramp Art at Froggatt which was climbed by Adrian Berry’s Sole Doubt (E8/9 6c) and a number of grit repeats by folks like Ben Bransby and David Macleod both of whom did Dunne's Carmen Picasso which is now on it's way down from E9 6c to E7/8 6c after Ben Bransby’s flash, the first ever of a claimed E9!

But we Brits are no longer alone in enjoying the sadistic sport of hard trad.. Jean Ming, whose fall from the unfallable Ghia was immortalised in Hard Grit, is perhaps the most famous of all the foreign visitors who have travelled to the UK to get scarred shitless. Such has been the attention given to trad. climbing of late that the bug seems to have taken root overseas.