UKC

Nothing to do with the recent SW events, just curious to what has been reclimbed in the past and claimed as a new route following a rockfall.

In reply to The Pylon King:
I'd just been wondering whether some bright spark was going to call the new start to Terrier's Tooth "Tooth Decay"...

Enough to alter the grade I guess.

In reply to Pete Dangerous:


by how much?

In reply to The Pylon King:

Usual answer: it depends.

If it alters the route significantly then yes otherwise it's pretty much the same route. An example would be Right Unconquerable at Stanage. A small part of the flake has come off (or was prised off) but it's essentially the same route as when Joe first did it. If the whole flake snapped in half or the bottom half fell off then it's pretty much going to be a new route though it's likely to keep the same name.

In reply to Pete Dangerous:


Nah, plenty of routes do that after the loss of holds.

If more than 50% (plucked out of the air), you get to reclaim and rename.

In reply to Ramblin dave:

Or Extraction! - but that's been done

In reply to Bulls Crack:

Out of interest has anything replaced Yankee Doodle, I would have thought Mark Edwards would have been up for that.
Myself and Keith Myhill re-did a route on Millstone that fell down, It was called, I think, Humpty Dumpty, and we renamed it All The Kings Horses, but it is in the latest guide as Humpty Dumpty done in 1994, so I don't know if it fell down again or what the provenance of the latest version is?

In reply to The Pylon King:

Case by case basis. As others have said above, I imagine it depends whether the bulk of what one would call 'the route' has gone or just a bit of it. Is it essentially a clean sheet again or is the line still there in similar nature to before?

In reply to Al Evans:

We climbed Deer Bield Buttress only to find the second pitch ended with a sharp-topped corner and then loose, very orange slab smelling of gunpowder leading to the top,

In reply to The Pylon King:

Are the Sugarbabes still the Sugarbabes, and if not a what point did they cease to be the Sugarbabes ?

In reply to Pete Dangerous:

When the start of King Kong at Wintour's Leap fell down, altering the grade from HVS to E1, no one proposed renaming the route.

In reply to John2:

So if you had a VS that had just been climbed then shortly after a small rockfall happens and the route is climbed by a very slightly different line at HVS, is it the same route?

In reply to The Pylon King:

There can't be a hard and fast rule, but I guess it depends on how much of the original line is climbed after the rockfall. I can think of a number of examples where the grade was changed but the original route remained - e.g. Nea was changed from HS to VS when the start fell down.

In reply to The Pylon King:

Wasn't there a few routes in Hodge Close slate quarry, where the entire route was removed after it was earmarked for the quarry?

In reply to John2:

Yeah thats what i thought.

In reply to The Pylon King:

Hound's Head Buttress & Fandango, Tremadog come to mind, but the daddy of them all must be the Caroline Face of Mt Cook, truely massive.

In reply to John2:


But that was just the start - a small percentage of the whole route.

In reply to The Pylon King:

Depends how egotistical the person doing the re-climbing is.

In reply to GDes:

I think that's the real deciding factor. The biggest route change I can think of with no name change is Wraith at Mother Carey's Kitchen, which changed from a crack climb to an arête.