UKC

According to my Facebook feedTom has climbed what he proposes as a new D14+ tooling route... what IS the hardest D grade at the minute anyway?

In reply to beardy mike:
Robert Jasper put up Ironman D14+ at Eptingen a few years ago. There might be a few others around. Google suggests that earlier this year a Korean climber, In-Seok Kang, did a D15- called Black Eagle but there's very little information about it. Ramon might know. So basically D14+ is pretty much as hard as it gets, great effort by Tom!

In reply to beardy mike:

"Bichette" is the world's hardest drytooling route, I'm fairly certain of it. It's by Jeff Mercier and it's in L'Usine and it hasn't been repeated as far as I know. I will ask Jeff this coming weekend. Ironman was graded D14+, but many have said to be a lot easier than that, Michi Wohlleben reckoned it wasn't even D13. Considering that so many people have made very quick ascents, it would make me think that it's certainly not the hardest. There are so many route at L'Usine alone that probably are way harder.

But now with Tom Ballard, he's seriously strong, I've climbed with him before. And he's not grading for fame either, as tooling for him is just training (a big difference there). So I would think that his D14+ is a serious contender to be the hardest natural (not drilled, like Bichette) drytooling route.

In reply to beardy mike:

This is an interesting blog by Jeff http://jeffmercier.blogspot.co.uk/p/world-wide-dry.html

Bichette has been repeated by the way apparently

It list the world's hardest tooling routes. The grades are only for DTS style, which I believe is the style Tom Ballard also uses.

Anyways, all this is irrelevant. Drytooling might be fun, but it's ultimately a wierd and basically pointless sport that people take too seriously. The only think that matters is what you do with it in the mountains. And that's a view shared by Tom, Jeff and everyone at the top. By glorifying this ascents we only just giving justification to a whole of people that have got it wrong and spend all summer in a dank cave and comes winter they spend all their time pulling on plastic holds with their axes. It's madness.

So let's train, get strong, ignore the grades, and get on our winter goals up in the real mountains.

In reply to Ramon Marin:

You never know - I might be able to get the commune to put a pipe up on the lip for winter

In reply to Ramon Marin:


I can't even look at the colour of that website let alone be bothered to read it (no slant on the poster intended)

In reply to Ramon Marin:


Basically replace "Drytooling" with any sport, ever.