In reply to Removed Userboje:
> Come on guys - it has to be Joe Brown.
> "It's the stuff that dreams are made of "
Well Boje, we've been kind of stumbling and shambling around this for quite some time now. Most three star FAs, you'd think it would have to be Gary on sheer volume alone. Ratio of three star FAs, Brown, Littlejohn, Crocker among those who were prolific or people such Dolphin whose careers were short (sadly so, in his case). And, to be a little silly, there must be someone out there who only did one FA and it was three-star so he or she gets 100%.
But if we consider 'the stuff that dreams are made of', which really underlies the whole three star notion, you are absolutely right - it has to be Brown. I cannot think of any other British climber who has produced more routes which have inspired our dreams.
You've got classic after classic after classic. With good guidebooks, good gear, good beta, people can go out, revel in the history and have fantastic days on so many great routes.
It's worth noting that they held their aura for a long time. Even in the 1970s, when I was doing some of these routes, the aura was still there, a decade or even two later. Often I didn't know anybody else who'd done a particular route; the foreboding gnawed at you. (I think it was different with close-knit groups; often somebody would be 'pushed' to break the barrier, do a particular Brown route and others would swiftly follow suit.) But for your 'Vector generation', doing relatively early repeats in the 1960s, well, that was quite something.
For the stuff of our dreams... it has to be Brown.
Mick