We reported last week that Ned Feehally had climbed The Island 8B+ in Fontainebleau, France - well now he's gone one step further to tick The Big Island 8C, an extension of the original problem first climbed by Vincent Pouchon which adds a couple of tricky moves to the start.
The Big Island is not "an extension to the original problem", it IS the original problem Vincent Pochon was working on when David Graham came along. He was showed the project and where it was supposed to start, but he decided to shun the first moves because he couldn't do them and started with his elbow resting on another boulder, claiming the first ascent. Very questionable. Pochon's beta is much more logical.
I'm sure there are plenty of lines around the world that didn't have sit starts because they were deemed too hard at the time. I really don't get your point.....
But the way David Graham shortened the thing is completely illogical, I mean he did an elbow-start (?) on a ledge (??) on which he put a crash-pad (???) for extra height. It's not a question of standing start versus sit-start, it's a standing start versus a half-standing, half-leaning start with a crash-pad (when local ethics dictates you should always start from the ground and not from a crash-pad). Even though a more logical line was already there. (Plus it's Dave Graham, surely he has put up enough 8Cs to be able to do the "proper" version.)
Nit-picking drivel. DG pulled off the ground where he could, and the FA of The Big Island extended it to a more logical start. You don't see Ned slagging off The Island start so there's no need for you to bother.
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