So now that we have the benchmark what has happened since? Following Ron’s ascent of Desperate Dan, the grit has seen a year-on-year growth such that there is now over one hundred (113 to be precise) routes in the magic grades of E7 and above. Top of the stack today is Equilibrium (E10 7a) from Neil Bentley, a gob-smacking, balls-out test-piece if ever there was one. For those of you into stats. there’s loads of hard grit routes between Desperate Dan and Equilibrium, in-fact seventy seven E7’s, twenty six E8, eight E9’s including a couple of other routes which masquerading as XS but probable slot into the list somewhere around the E9 category.

Without wishing to start something akin to the War of the Roses all over again, it does seem that the Peak has more than it’s share of hard grit. Yorkshire, for it’s part lacks the numbers of the Peak but also has some real quality routes and over in Lancashire they aren’t short of the odd test-piece here and there.

Starting with E7, today the grade covers a fair range of technical difficulties from 6b (Desperate Dan in 1979) to 7a (Salmon Left-Hand in 1995). E8, by comparison hit the scene in 1986, though by the end of what proved to be a frantic year there was a total of five E8’s for the top-jocks to throw-on. Easiest, if that term can be applied to an E8, of the bunch added that year was Johnny Dawes’ End of the Affair (E8 6b) at Curbar. Harder still, and the first ever E8, was Gaia (E8 6c), again from Dawes. However, other renowned grit-gods got onto the score sheet: John Dunne with Countdown to Disaster (E8 6c), Nick Dixon with Doug (E8 6c) and then ultimately, Mark Leach with The Screaming Dream (E8 7a). At this point it is perhaps worth taking a quick grade-check to compare how routes on the grit were developing relative to limestone. Surprisingly, Leach’s The Screaming Dream was technically harder than Magnetic Fields and Zeke the Freak, both of which were cutting edge limestone sport routes done a year later in 1987. Mark Leach’s ascent of The Screaming Dream also hit the headlines for the protracted sieging which Mark laid in order to get a result. In the event, Leach took twenty six days to master the twenty foot route, and as some wag said at the time, at more than an E point per metre it has to be (and it is) tough going! In stark contrast to the other E8 added that year, The Screaming Dream had excellent protection, the E in this instance representing effort and not extermination! Since then, more E8’s have followed, though none harder than Johnny Dawes’ 1994/95 routes Angel Share (E8 7b) at Black Rocks and Smoked Salmon (E8 7b) at Bamford.

Moving ever upward, the first E9 was done in 1989 with the infamous Parthian Shot (E9 7a) from Mr Yorkshire Gristone himself, John Dunne. Parthian Shot cause a stir through-out the climbing community which was to rumble on for many years to come. There were those who doubted Dunne’s ascent at the time, though many were convinced that Dunne’s ascent was kosher and one of the finest leads of it’s time. Parthian was to wait nearly a decade before the second ascent fell, after considerable effort, to none other than Seb Grieve. Famously, Grieve took numerous falls off Parthian before topping out, thereby shattering the myth and opening the ‘flood gates’. Although four ‘easier’ E9 6c’s have been done since Parthian Shot, of which Seb Grieve’s Meshugai and Charlie Woodburn’s Harder Faster have grabbed the head lines big time, only one other E9 7a, Widdop Wall, again from John Dunne, has been done since. That is unless you include the two 7b wild cards of Slingshot and Samson from Mo Overfield and Jerry Moffatt respectively, both of which are currently graded XS but in reality are probably worth E9 just for the effort that will be required!

So that just leaves the aforementioned Equilibrium which at E10 7a slots in at No. 1. Arguably, Neil Bentley’s ascent of Equilibrium in February 2000 was a defining moment in the art of the gritstone climbing. A Font 8a crux at a height of thirty five foot, twenty foot above the gear is what Equilibrium has to offer, and lest you have forgotten, it is the line that Ben Moon top-roped in 1993 at 8b+ and then walked away from! Needless to say, it’s still unrepeated at present.